In an interesting new partnership, fellow Colorado company -- Filtrbox -- announces this morning that they have turned to NewsGator to boost the quality of the proactive market intelligence it provides to sales forces, executives, marketers and investors. 

Filtrbox scours millions of online sources, both mainstream and new media, and delivers high quality business intelligence tailored for each client.  As a result, organizations make better decisions based on breaking news, trends and competitive happenings.

With help from NewsGator, Filtrbox's product will become even more compelling: they now use our metadata based on over 50 million Internet user actions every month.  As Ari Newman, founder and president of Filtrbox, explains, "We analyze massive amounts of information to ensure the relevance and value of content we deliver" and now that "NewsGator has just added attention metadata to the mix, we can use that to further boost the information used by FiltrRank to rate articles."

Flitrbox has turned to NewsGator since we operate the largest repository of free internet content.  Indeed, NewsGator adds 9 million new articles to our repository every day, indexing and aggregating 4.6 million separate feeds and archiving four years of historical content!  And, because millions of people interact with NewsGator products each day, we are able to supply Filtrbox with millions of pieces of metadata on user actions. 

As Walker Fention, GM of NewsGator's Media & Data Services explains, "NewsGator's Data Services' unique insight into how audiences are responding to content gives Filtrbox clients more value out of their intelligence information." 

You can learn more about NewsGator Data Services here.

I stumbled across a helpful food-for-thought type blog post by Kailee Brown of Ignite Social Media titled, "8 Questions to Ask When Developing Widgets for Social Media Marketing."  As Kailee rightly explains, "widget development can be costly and time consuming. It is important to ask the right questions before developing widgets. Here is somewhat of a checklist that needs to be answered if you are considering developing a widget as part of your social media marketing campaign."

Here are 8 specific things she suggests you have in mind before launching a widget (campaign):

• Why would people want to use the widget?
• How will people find the widget?
• How will you or your organization track the widget? 
• What is an appropriate size for the widget?
• Who is the target demographic?
• Is it appropriately branded?  (Note: I think this one is huge)
• How long is the campaign?
• Does creating a widget match your overall business objectives?

She goes into detail regarding each question in her blog post, and most of what she says is spot on.  I suggest you give it a full read.

I'm really pleased to announce the unveiling of two new widget campaigns that utilize some of the richest features of NewsGator Technologies' widget framework. Portable cobranded widgets extend your brand, and related topics widgets offer up trusted content to enhance readership.

Discovery Channel and HowStuffWorks.com today introduced these syndicated content offerings for online news publishers' Web sites. Here's what each one has to offer:

Discovery Channel's Science and Technology News Widget
From cutting-edge medicine and renewable energy to nanotechnology and flying cars, Discovery Channel’s portable widget features science and technology news from its award-winning Discovery News service. Since 1998, Discovery News has produced breaking news and in-depth coverage and analysis of technology and space-related news, as well as developments in earth sciences like meteorology, geology and ecology. With credible and compelling science and technology content updated daily, the new portable widget provides publishers such as online news organizations with a turnkey solution to bolster science and technology coverage and engage online audiences.

“With our high-quality engaging content, Discovery Channel has always been a trusted source for people online who want to explore the rapidly advancing world of science and technology,” said Iain Langridge, vice president, operations, digital media, Discovery Communications. “Using NewsGator’s service, we provide publishers a way to deepen their consumer experience with original science and technology news from a credible brand in an easy-to-distribute-and-digest package.”

HowStuffWorks.com’s Related Topics Links
HowStuffWorks.com, the Web site famous for demystifying the world, is on a similar mission to better inform visitors while supporting publishers. HowStuffWorks.com’s new “Related Topics” offering allows visitors of a participating newspaper’s or content partner’s site to follow related topic links next to a story they are reading and discover articles that illuminate the original story.

“People want to know more about the world around them. The news tells readers what happened, HowStuffWorks.com explains why and how,” said Jason Hoch, vice president, product development, HowStuffWorks.com.  “From the ways in which a tornado forms to the science behind multiple births, the new ‘Related Topics’ modules offer readers more in-depth information on the latest headlines allowing them to learn more and further satisfy their curiosity.”

“Succeeding on the Web means putting your content where your consumers want it, when they want it, and NewsGator’s Syndication Service does that by making it easy to share content with other sites in ways that benefit both the publisher and the audience alike,” said Walker Fenton, general manager of NewsGator’s media and data services division. “Our offerings bring tremendous value to publishers by giving them greater access to high-quality content from trustworthy and recognizable brands like Discovery Channel and HowStuffWorks.com.”

The new Discovery Channel and HowStuffWorks.com offerings seamlessly integrate into a publisher’s Web site – augmenting the publisher’s existing content with relevant partner information that increases page views and ad revenue, improving search engine optimization and increasing lift. The offerings are available to qualified media companies, and there are no maintenance or resource requirements.

Want more info? Here are a few helpful links to get started:

• Sign up for a cobranded Discovery Channel Widget: http://dsc.discovery.com/widgets/newsgator/signup-page.html
• Discovery Channel widget featured in the NewsGator Widgets gallery: http://newsgatorwidgets.com/GalleryDSCCobrand.aspx
• Sign up for a HowStuffWorks.com related content widget: http://newsgatorwidgets.com/hsw/
• Watch a screencast about the HowStuffWorks.com widget: http://newsgatorwidgets.com/hsw/howtohsw1.aspx
• Watch a screencast on how to get started with the HowStuffWorks.com widget: http://newsgatorwidgets.com/hsw/howtohsw2.aspx

Curious about NewsGator goings-on outside of the Media and Consumer space?  I'm excited to pass along some cool news about the popularity of NewsGator's own native iPhone RSS reader application, NetNewsWire.

Here are some statistics that I think are pretty interesting:

• There are nearly 300,000 individual users
• Over 120 million items have been marked read in the past two weeks!
• There are over 1 million separate feeds
• The average number of subscribed feeds per user is 20
• 100,000 users have signed on in the past 30 days

And, if you're curious, here are the five most popular RSS feeds (by number of subscribers):

• Macworld
• Daring Fireball
• Engadget
• Ars Technica
• The Unofficial Apple Blog (TUAW)

If you have an iPhone and haven't yet gotten your NetNewsWire action on, you can get it for free at the iPhone app store or learn more about it here.

The large viral widget in the center of Earth Knowledge's site (a smaller version of which is seen at right) is notable because it is highly dynamic, interacts with Google Maps, and has multiple tabs.  For instance, users can chose one or more of over 60 different map layers, instantly overlaying geographic data like rivers and ecosystems.  Depending on the content you choose -- biological diversity, water, climate, land -- links to different stories will be displayed.  Even cooler, the widget links these categories, as well as individual stories, with geographic indicators on a map.

The website, whose content NewsGator powers, even earned Earth Knowledge a news segment on "Our Planet" which will air on CNN Headline News and Fox Business News and also just recently debuted an internet-browser-based Map Tool as well.

This widget is an example of the very interactive and complex nature of some of the widgets we've created for our clients.  Check it out here!  Enjoy.