I have a cool new product to introduce to you which is notable in that it is one of the first ever desktop widgets that we've created for a media client. The widget, which just launched, allows you to access the latest celebrity news via through a small, very easy-to-install, application that shows up on your desktop. (It took me about 30 seconds to install it from start to finish.)
This application was developed specifically for Clear Channel, a NewsGator media customer. Interestingly, Clear Channel has launched over 700 (!) private label versions of this application to their extensive list of radio stations. The (image of the) widget you see here is the KBCO version of the State Farm Entertainment Widget -- shrunk for display purposes; the actual widget is 500 pixels in width.
Check out this widget to get your fill of all the entertainment industry as to offer! You can download and install it here.
In order to spread the word about the two awesome widgets Democratic National Convention -- on a Big Tent blog widget, the other a Qik video widget -- I'll be on hand, in person, today showing people the widgets and getting folks excited about them.
As a reminder, the first widget, which I think is ground-breaking, is called the "Qik Convention Widget."
This widget consolidates and streams live video from the DNC as mobile
phone users capture it using Qik's phone to web service.
The second, Big Tent Widget, consolidates
feeds from nearly 200 bloggers, new media journalists and nonprofit
leaders credentialed for the Big Tent, the 9,000 square-foot new media center hosted by Progress Now, Daily Kos, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and sponsored by Digg, Google, NewsGator, and others. Also, it shows the latest content first, with priority on hot topics and popular blogs, through smart filtering technology.
Reminder: you can place the Big Tent widget on your blog or start page
by clicking the "get" this button on the widget above; you can place
the Qik Convention Widget on your blog/start page by clicking here.
Also, to follow NewsGator's presence at the DNC today, follow us on Twitter -- "newsgatorwidget."
Don't misunderstand us: we are not obsessed with the Democratic National Convention at NewsGator Widgets, even though it may seem that way. What we are obsessed with is helping our media partners create timely, dynamic, interactive widgets. This is the reason why we focused on Olympics widgets early in the month, why we're focusing on DNC widgets now, and why we'll bring you some RNC widgets the week of their convention -- plus more political widgets as the election approaches.
Today I have a cool new DNC widget to share with you. We created a widget for one of our customers, CBS Local, to profile DNC news on the local CBS-owned Denver channel 4. This one is not only cool looking, but it also shows informative, dynamic coverage of the DNC proceedings. I especially like that you can toggle between the latest poll or an election countdown at the bottom of the widget. The latter displays, real-time, the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until election day!
If you, like me, are a political junkie, you'll want to check this
new widget out. You can click "embed this widget" on the widget shown here or
to see it on the local Denver CBS webpage -- it's on the right sidebar
-- here.
While NewsGator Widgets and this blog are thoroughly non-partisan, I'm pleased to let you know that we are involved with two really cool new widgets that provide new media coverage of the Democratic National Convention. In some ways this is natural undertaking for us since our offices in downtown Denver are only 3 blocks away from the Denver Convention Center. I can even see the DNC proceedings from the window of my 25th story office here!
The inspiration for these widgets was based on the fact that bloggers and video bloggers are gaining influence over presidential politics; with these widgets, we are providing tools that give the public a fresh way of tracking events at this week's Democratic National Convention.
The first widget, which I think is ground-breaking, is called the "Qik Convention Widget." This widget consolidates and streams live video from the DNC as mobile phone users capture it using Qik's phone to web service. Qik is emerging as a platform to provide some of the most immediate and dramatic citizen journalism. As Qik's CEO -- Ramu Sunkara -- suggests, the collaboration between Qik live video and NewsGator widgets "gives bloggers at the DNC unprecedented reach."
The second widget is called the "NewsGator Big Tent Widget," named for the Big Tent new media center built for the convention. This widget, shown at right, is similar in nature to the first widget, though it captures, consolidates and displays blog posts (rather than Qik video content) related to the DNC proceedings. It shows the latest content first, with priority on hot topics and popular blogs, through smart filtering technology.
You might be interested to know that the Big Tent Widget consolidates feeds from nearly 200 bloggers, new media journalists and nonprofit leaders credentialed for the Big Tent, the 9,000 square-foot new media center hosted by Progress Now, Daily Kos, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and is sponsored by Digg, Google, NewsGator, and others.
I'll leave you with a quote from Jeff Nolan, VP of NewsGator's Media and Consumer division: "The influence and impact of new media in recent years is undeniable, but many folks miss out on the conversation aspect of social media. We're making it easy to follow the conversation -- and, in fact, join it -- by putting the entire chorus of Democratic National Convention bloggers and Qikkers in one place."
So, regardless of your political affiliation, do yourself a favor and check out these very cool new widgets! The Qik video widget is available here, while the Big Tent Widget is available here (on the right side of the page). Enjoy!
There's an interesting article by Stephanie Olsen up on CNET regarding the (seemingly?) ever-changing widget landscape. While the story mainly talks about purely social/entertainment widgets -- Slide, RockYou, Flickster, etc. -- it's still an interesting read. One of the more provactive parts of the story:
"...Can one application company on Facebook build a
few-hundred-million-dollar business? I'm personally skeptical," said
Navin Chadda, a venture capitalist with the Mayfield Fund, which is
invested in Slide and widget distribution network Gigya."
Note, this is not the area of business where we at NewsGator widgets focus our attention, though you can place our widgets on Facebook. We have stayed out of platform-specific (i.e., Facebook only) widgets since our experience has shown that the reach and interaction of widgets can -- potentially -- be significantly higher if the widget "lives" in many places throughout the social web as opposed to one platform, like Facebook.
If Yahoo and Intel have their way, in the not so distant future you may see widgets not only on the internet but also on your TV! Yesterday they announced their joint intention to create some type of a "Widget Channel" for TV running on Intel's hardware and supporting a variety of platforms like Flash, HTML, JavaScript, etc.
Apparently, they envision that small widgets might have a place alongside standard television content at some point. I think TechCrunch does have an interesting point to make, however:
"The TV Widgets Channel continues to blur the line between a
television and a computer with a big screen - it probably won’t be long
before the distinction no longer exists. And while I could see some of
the widgets coming in handy, they might also turn off a lot of users.
For many people, television is an escape from the constant alerts and
messages of today’s society. Interactive TV is a neat idea, but
sometimes people just want to kick up their feet and relax."
What do you think? Would you want to see widgets on television in the future -- or is that too much?
You can check out the full article here. And for coverage from a slightly different angle, click here.
If you haven't noticed yet, NewsGator loves to partner with high quality content providers, as well as companies that enhance and extend our product offerings to our clients (such as mSpoke or AideRSS).
Today we announce a partnership with National Geographic to create, host and track several dynamic widgets, including an interactive photo puzzle widget that users spend, on average, several minutes interacting with.
What's most novel about this partnership is that it transcends the "traditional" widget syndication model (users add widgets to start pages or social networking sites), by adding another dimension of distribution: allowing third parties to co-brand the widget and feature it on their own sites. So far, major media sits like Tampa Bay Online and the Dayton Daily News have already picked up these dynamic, co-branded widgets.
The NewsGator-hosted, National Geographic widgets include: "OurShot," a widget in which photo editors highlight recent exceptional work and "YourShot," through which end users can contribute photos in the hopes of being featured in the magazine. The cool thing about the YourShot widget is that each day it features different finalists' photos in the form of a puzzle, which can be co-branded by third parties and featured on their sites for free. (And it's incredibly easy to add, too: third parties can add the puzzle widget by using a single URL to submit their logo and RSS feed info.)
And we already have numbers to back up the effectiveness of this partnership! In the first 30 days of the launch, the widget was syndicated to over 23 media sites not affiliated with National Geographic, extending the potential reach of the National Geographic branded widget to over 3 million new users!
Rob Covey, managing editor and creative director of National Geographic explains that, "with the puzzle widget, we have really been able to extend our brand through co-branding, now allowing our partner sites to get up and running with the widget smoothly and efficiently [and at no cost] through a single URL."
And Jeff Nolan, VP of NewsGator Consumer and Media Services, furthers that National Geographic is just the latest in a growing list of media customers who are, "defining a new generation of media experience based on dynamic content syndication and user interaction that results in a more engaged audience." The engagement that these interactive, co-branded widgets foster is clearly key to their ability to connect with customers.
There are so many moving parts inside NewsGator Technologies, that sometimes it's difficult to keep all of our activities straight. For instance, we have products and tools in the following diverse areas: social sites; enterprises server; widget framework, data services; branded readers; and RSS readers -- such as Brent Simmons'NetNewsWire (for Mac & iPhone). Because of that, each of us at NewsGator sometimes need to catch ourselves up on what other parts of the company are doing.
Lucky for us, Brent decided to dive into NewsGator Widgets and see what they're all about. He's written a highly informative, detailed blog post on NewsGator's widgets business from his perspective. His insights and reactions are a very valuable read, and I hope you'll stop by his post, "Checking Out NewsGator Widgets."
The premise of his post? "I didn’t know that much about widgets, and I got curious." His point of view is a unique one because he is highly experienced in the Tech and RSS space, but is a relative outsider to the world of widgets. I think you'll find what he has to say very elucidating.
This is the first of a series of monthly guest posts which will include content from people working both inside and outside of NewsGator as well as in the widget/tech space in general. This week, we're lucky to have mSpoke's Sean Ammirati write on our collaborative Related Content Widget.
Over the last several months, NewsGator has partnered with mSpoke on several initiatives. Our first jointly-developed product "the Related Content widget" is now coming to market. While many companies can recommend related articles, we provide a superior experience by combining NewsGator's attention data and reporting with mSpoke's content analysis capabilities. In this post, I'll give a quick overview of how the Related Content Widget works and some of the highlights of our unique approach.
How Does it Work?
On page-load, the Related Content widget displays other related articles. As the publisher, you can choose to recommend related articles from either across the web (which allows you to blacklist some sources), a defined set of white-listed sources, or exclusively from your own content. You also can monetize this directly by including an advertisement or other sponsored content as part of the widget.
As with most widgets, the installation is simple. Select the sources to be considered for recommendations, then add a little HTML snippet to the sidebar of your template. The widget will then automatically recommend appropriate related articles for each item.
Why Do We Believe Our Approach is Better?
We all know this isn't a new use case as many solutions exist for recommending related content for articles. Yet intuitively we also know most of these solutions could provide better recommendations. Our Related Content Widget will deliver that experience using a superior approach built on four unique properties:
Richer understanding of the concepts in an article
Improved measures of an article's popularity
Flexibility to recommend multiple types of content
Detailed reports on visitor usage and interaction
A number of flexible display options
Richer Understanding of the Concepts in an Article
Leveraging the mSpoke's platform lets us annotate both an article and the sources available for related recommendations with appropriate metadata. For our widget, mSpoke tags articles with three different types of content attributes:
Categories: a modified subset of the Wikipedia categories which reasonably reflect the kinds of material often found in RSS feed items;
Topics: events or ideas that have been mentioned in multiple feed items in recent days or weeks. Each topic is algorithmically identified and named; and
Named Entities: identify the people, organizations, and locations mentioned in each article.
The Related Content widget would then consider other articles identified as being about Social Bookmarking, Search Engine Optimization, bookmarks and Google for recommendation.
Improved Measures of an Article's Popularity
In addition to the meaning of an article, we need to understand the popularity of the content being considered for recommendation. At mSpoke, we have investigated many different measures of an item's popularity. We have found the aggregate attention scores across the NewsGator platform to be far more predictive than any other single measure of popularity for relevance. The Related Content widget uses the NewsGator attention scores to evaluate the popularity of any article being considered for recommendation.
Side Note! We have been so impressed with the predictive power of the NewsGator's attention scores that we are incorporating them into our demo application, FeedHub. For those of you who aren't familiar with FeedHub, it allows anyone using an RSS reader (including NewsGator Online, NetNewsWire or FeedDemon) to filter the most relevant set of articles from a set of feeds chosen by the individual. (For example, the set of feeds you just can't keep up with and ever few weeks mark as read.) FeedHub provides each user with a personalized feed they can subscribe to in the RSS reader they choose. Each FeedHub user has their own set of memes (or content preferences) which automatically adjust based on what content attributes are most predictive for them. In the next few weeks, we'll be adding a NewsGator meme. So, go ahead, create a FeedHub account now, and watch as the new NewsGator meme starts recommending popular content. We think you'll find the NewsGator meme very predictive for you!
Flexibility to Recommend Multiple Types of Content
Beyond targeting related articles, many publishers want to provide hyper-relevant commercial content to their readers by using the Related Content widget. This can be advertisements we provide and share part of the revenue with the publisher, or a publisher may have their own ads, sponsored white-papers, or other content they''d like to promote. Either way, our system can attach appropriate metadata to this commercial content, increasing visitors' interaction with both the recommended articles and the sponsored material.
Detailed Reports on Visitor Interaction
If you have used any of the NewsGator widgets, you already know that the level of transparency provided in their reports on visitor interaction is second to none. We are very excited that publishers using the Related Content widget will get that same level of insight into reader behavior.
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed seeing how the Related Content widget can help you increase visitor interaction and loyalty by providing superior related content. At this time, we have a few pilot publisher's in the process of deploying the widget. We will certainly announce here and on the mSpoke blog as they launch. If you would like to incorporate this functionality on your site, please contact us or leave a comment below.
I forgot to blog about this yesterday, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that one of our friends in the widget space, Lijit, closed a C series round on Monday of $7 million. Lijit, which is on this blog (on the upper right side bar under "search") is a powerful search widget that can be placed on individual blogs (like ours) or online publishing networks. For example, from Lijit's analytics data, I can tell you neat facts like that visitors have come to this blog 284 times by searching the key words "olympics widget."
Lijit has shown that it allows site visitors to enhance their experience on the site based on search topics, in turn generating more traffic (and potentially revenue) for the blog publisher. We're a big fan of Lijit here, and we're told that the additional funds they've raised will allow them to monetize most, if not all of their search widgets, and also permit them to launch their own ad network. The company will also grow in size so that no products can be developed.
On a more personal note, I am friends with Lijit's Community Manager counterpart, Tara Anderson, who also runs Lijit'sblog. (You can also see her personal site here.) Why am I mentioning this? Tara and I are in the initial stages of planning a Widget workshop in the Denver/Boulder area sometime this fall. If you have ideas you'd like to share with us on possible workshop topics, or like to be involved, please leave us a note in the comments section.
I have a cool new product to introduce to you which is notable in that it is one of the first ever desktop widgets that we've created for a media client. The widget, which just launched, allows you to access the latest celebrity news via through a small, very easy-to-install, application that shows up on your desktop. (It took me about 30 seconds to install it from start to finish.)
