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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:
I'm excited to announce today that Public Radio International (PRI) has tapped NewsGator to syndicate their high quality content across the web through free widgets. The premise behind this offering is that listeners increasingly find their radio online, so PRI -- with help from NewsGator -- decided to syndicate their content through viral widgets that serve up both audio and text headlines. These widgets capitalize on the fact that radio-related websites saw a 30% jump in visitors last year.
If you're not familiar with PRI, they produce and distribute programs such as "The World," "The Takeaway," "This American Life," and also distributes news services like BBC World Service and Capitol News Connection. In fact, PRI provides more than 400 hours of audio content each week, which is heard by 12 million listeners on over 800 public radio stations as well as online via streaming, podcasts and on-demand.
The new viral widgets, which are available at http://www.pri.org/pri-widgets, feature an in-page audio player as well as headlines of PRI stories so listeners can freely embed them wherever across the social web they like: on web sites, blogs, social networks, and personalized start pages, for example. These widgets were created to automatically to track usage volume as well as to allow PRI editors customize the widgets' look, feel and behavior through our Editor's Desk platform.
The new PRI widgets are offered in three separate flavors:
- an Economic Security widget
- a Global Health & Development widget
- a Social Entrepreneurship widget [note: shown at right]
Also neat is the fact that other media organizations can co-brand the PRI widgets with their own logo upon request to PRI. Headlines link back to the approved co-brander's site, increasing page views, time spent on site, and brand visibility. In addition, there are no setup, hosting or licensing fees for co-branders.
As Walker Fenton, GM of NewsGator Media & Consumer products, says, "PRI is the epitome of quality programming an exemplar of how premier content producers are expanding audience and consumer choice at the same time. Media today is as much about reaching out to listeners where they are as attracting them to your station or site, and that's what NewsGator Widget Services help accomplish for our customers.
You can check out the new PRI widgets here or co-brand the widgets here.
I'm excited to let you know that Variety.com has just launched a brand new iPhone app along with a widget on their site (seen at right), both powered by NewsGator. Variety is one of the premier sources of business news covering the entertainment and media space, and its new iPhone app allows readers non-stop access to the most compelling entertainment industry buzz.
The iPhone app was developed using NewsGator's content syndication services and Reed Business' Search Zibb on Demand search engine. Neil Stiles, President and Publisher of the Variety Group explains that their audience "includes some of the world's most powerful professionals and busiest stars, all of whom want information as and when it happens" and that the new Newsgator-powered iPhone app and widget give them "a competitive advantage" that offers their readers "greater choice in a market with an ever increasing number of media outlets."
In addition to the speed of content delivery, the iPhone application and widget both allow users to select only the content they're interested in, whether that's news, reviews, videos, photos, or interactive tools. As Walker Fenton, GM of NewsGator's Media & Consumer Products, explains, "the media landscape is changing, and publishers are looking for creative ways to increase revenues while holding the line on costs. Viral content syndication meets this need head on and, in the case of the Variety Widget and iPhone app, rides the world's relentless interest in movies and entertainment."
How exactly does it work? NewsGator servers drive content quickly and continuously to the iPhone app and widget, and NewsGator's Editor's Desk application provides control and customization directly to the media source, allowing Variety to edit its content feeds on the fly. The content within the app and the widget is generated through Zibb, the business-to-business search engine of Reed Business, one of the premier providers of business information to the world.
Check out the cool new iPhone app and widget today!
Our superb technical support engineers, Jenny & Dan, have a very useful, step-by-step post on the NewsGator technical blog describing how to create a related content widget. It is absolutely a must read if you're interesting in trying out service, as they walk you through each step; it's surprisingly easy!
I should point out, too, what they note before going through the steps:
"Since related content is such an awesome feature
that involves a lot of extensive searching and sleuthing, you'll have
to enable it through sales via Craig Lachman. Shoot him an email and he'll get you squared away."
So, just to clarify, you can build related content widgets very quickly and easily through our Editor's Desk widget creation and tracking platform, but this service has to be enabled first by our Director of Sales, who's email address you'll find above.
As always, happy widgeting! :D
I'm excited to announce a new feature set that we're offering here at NewsGator: Related Content. As Walker Fenton, GM of NewsGator's Media & Data Services, asks quite simply, "why leave readers wanting more when you can actually give them more, automatically, and keep them on your site and clicking through?" Of course, you wouldn't in an ideal world, and here is where our related content offerings come into play.
We are offering two different types of related content features:
- A related stories widget that offers readers headlines for stories they may be interested in. It
works quite simply: when they click on a headline, a fly-out window
appears with the opening paragraphs of each story; another click
reveals the full article, and ads can be embedded at every turn.
- A related topics page which automatically presents contextually related topics to readers as key
words. Readers click on the key word of interest and are redirected to
a page of stories relevant to the key word.
Both of these related content services have multiple benefits:
- they get readers more engaged with your site's content
- they generate additional ad revenue for you
- they enhance SEO by expanding content, providing another channel to gain readership and increase page views
- the services also eliminate publishers' reliance on traditional paid news sources
But the related content widgets are only as good as the content behind them, right? Well, bet you didn't know this: every day we add 8.5 million new articles to our database, indexing and aggregating 3.6 million different feeds and archiving 4 years of content! This huge database of content -- in fact, the industry's largest such repository of free content -- a result of our pioneering RSS reading/delivery services, is offered to publishers who wish to supplement their own content with related stories from 3rd parties. We even track more than 44 million "relevance events" in this activity, ensuring related content is truly relevant! It's quite simple: the more content to draw from, and the better indexed that is, the better the related content supplied by our widget offerings.
What's more, publishers have control over their widgets' look and feel, search action, and content sources through our existing Editor's Desk platform; this makes it quick and effortless to build, manage, and track these new related content widgets. And we also offer flexibility in pricing for our related content services: hosted (transaction based) and free (ad supported with revenue-sharing).
You can read more about our related content offering here. Or, read the official press release here.
Even better, you can sign up for our upcoming, FREE WEBINAR on this exciting new offering here.
You know that I'm always excited about new widgets, but I'm particularly excited about the brand new type of content distribution model called reverse syndication that NewsGator and our media clients are embarking on. (For an excellent introduction to reverse syndication, I highly recommend you read Jeff Jarvis' excellent post on the topic.) We're in the process of launching "Across the Field" widgets with 32 online newspapers to cover NFL games this fall and winter. The details are fairly complicated but I hope you'll stay with me because when you learn the new territory we're charting, think you'll be rightly impressed.
NewsGator is building widgets for a consortium of 32 online papers -- one for each team in the NFL. While the newspapers are not necessarily owned by the same companies, they've decided to share high quality content with one another in a novel way. Essentially, we're talking about the atomization of content -- where, esentially, content is broken up into many pieces and distributed (often standalone) across the web; in this case, the online newspapers we're parterning with are atomizing their content through NewsGator widgets. (For an excellent introduction to atomization of content, check out PR Squared's post on the subject.)
The best way to explain is through a real-life example: this week the Pittsburgh Steelers are set to play the New York Giants. Leading up to the game, the New York Daily News's website has a widget on their sports/football page with content on the opposing team -- in this case the Pittsburgh Steelers -- from The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. And the reverse would be true as well: The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has content from The New York Daily News on the Giants on their sports page. In essence, they're shared bits of atomized content in the form of opposition scouting reports from in the inside lines of the competitor's 'camp.'
The theory behind this specfic setup is that each online paper already has plenty of content about their home team already but much less (if any) about the opposing team; enter, stage right, the "Across the Field" widgets providing insight on the competitors' teams. (The content in the widget will change weekly along with the game schedule.) Even better, while the content feeding these widgets is full text RSS from the opposing team's local newspaper, when visitors to The New York Daily News click on articles about the Pittsburgh Steelers within the widget on website, they will remain on The New York Daily News site; they are not leaving the "home" newspaper's site -- courtesy some fancy coding footwork -- which increases the "stickiness" of each paper's content offerings.
What do media clients get out of this? A lot. Online newspapers get (atomized) high quality content from the opposing team's local newspaper -- probably more knowledgeable than anyone; even better, these stories are hosted on their own site (leading to more page impressions) and they can place advertisements on the article pages to enhance monetization. (Sort of a three-for-one deal.)
These "Across the Field" widgets, which represent the cutting edge of reverse content syndication & atomization of content, are a great example of some of the new and exciting directions NewsGator (and our partner clients) are proceeding in syndicating content in powerful new ways. I'd say, from this vantage point, the future of widgets is quite bright.
I'd like to introduce you to our brand new co-branded Reuters 2008 Election Widgets. Much like what we did with AFP for the Olympics, these free widgets allow you to place high quality content -- this time around, news, photos and videos regarding the 2008 Election from Reuters -- in a widget with your own branding and revenue-generating advertisements.
We've made it incredibly easy for you with three different templates you can choose from (text coverage, video coverage, video w/ thumbnails) which gives you flexibility in how you display the content. As with the vast majority of NewsGator widgets, these 2008 Political widgets are highly portable, meaning they can be placed anywhere one line of java script can be displayed! Best of all, there are no setup, hosting, or licensing fees from Reuters or NewsGator. And, of course, you can generate revenue from the ads you serve on the pages that feature the widget, full text,
and video.
The widget you see above is one that The Denver Post put together. This particular widget (one of three that we're offering)
shows the latest video inline, and if you click on a thumbnail below
the video, you'll go to a full media player on the DPO site; all they had to do was give us a logo and a page to point the links to.
In short, if you want to provide your audience with portable, high quality Reuters political content through a widget with your own branding and advertisements, generating revenue and driving back links to your site for free, then check out these widgets today.
The first fruits of an alliance between NewsGator and Turner International Japan, Inc (owner of CNN Japan) have arrived! Turner launched NewsGator-powered widgets on CNN.co.jp on the first of this month.
What's in it for CNN Japan? The NewsGator widgets will help them to expand their brand and reach through the viral capabilities of the widgets. With this widget, site visitors can get CNN news and videos in both English and Japanese, which is cool. There are two versions of the widget: the wider version for iGoogle and other portals and a narrower version for blogs. In short, the CNN widgets are a one stop solution for worldwide online CNN content.
A couple more cool things about the widget:
- through the widget on CNN.co.jp it is possible to get real-time news content and videos from various CNN group websites including CNN.com & international sites
- within the widget, users are able to personalize the news categories they'd like to see; they can select from business, US, World news and other categories
- the widget's viral functions include the ability to add it to start pages and other sites like blogs as well as the ability to send headlines and links through email as well as rate popular stories
While I would normally encourage you to check out or add new widgets, I don't blame you one bit if you don't in this case since it's in Japanese. Though, I will add, serious bonus points for anyone who can read Japanese to translate some of the widget! I'll send you some NewsGator swag.
I'd like to introduce you to one of the newest widgets in the NewsGator widget network. We made this technology widget for Reuters UK.
Like the vast majority of our (viral) widgets, this technology widget can be ported to a plethora of different locations on the web. The widget includes one-click install for iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Livespace, Blogger, Typepad, and Facebook, making it super easy to take with you. There is also a manual install code if you'd like to place it elsewhere on the web or a on a blog. It also allows you the ability to email, and rate, individual articles from within the widget.
For the latest in technology news from Reuters, check out this cool new widget!
If you can't tell as per my previous two posts, we're really excited about these highly interactive sports widgets that we built for TMS. I had a chance to sit down with Doug Furcht, a Software Engineer for NewsGator's Media & Consumer Products, to talk about some of the (fairly complex) technical issues behind these new widgets as well as a few other topics. Here's our conversation:
- Josh: These sports widgets seem to be some of the most complex we've done before. What were some of the challenges in building them?
- Doug: Probably the largest obstacle was just getting familiar with someone else's data. Everything in these widgets are driven by the data coming from TMS -- lists of sports, all teams for those sports, and all schedules for those teams. It's a lot of data and it's difficult to work with until you've got your head around it.
- Josh: This is one of our first customizable widgets in the sense that you can add your own teams to track. How are one's selections 'saved'?
- Doug: Yes, you can add any team from any league that the widget is configured to show. The users selections are saved locally in a persistent cookie.
- Josh: What's a feature you're particularly proud of developing?
- Doug: I'm
particularly pleased with the vast number of configuration options and
the ease in which these options can be configured. All of this is
achieved through a management console where the widget's settings are
defined -- such as local teams, local television stations, ad
placements, etc. The console then builds a special block of code (the
widget) based on these settings.
- Josh: Are there any new technical aspects you've learned from creating these widgets that you can apply to future ones?
- Doug: The TrimPath templating engine that lies at the core of widget framework is very powerful and the knowledge I now have about how it works will be useful in future products.
- Josh: Are you happy with the end result?
- Doug: In retrospect there are things I would have done differently during development (as there always are) but I'm really excited about how this project turned out.
- Josh: Finally, since these are sports widgets we're talking about, I have to ask you what your favorite teams are to watch.
- Doug: I prefer to play Ultimate Frisbee. But, if I had to watch sports on TV, it would have to be either the Nuggets or the Dolphins.
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Josh Larson
Assistant Marketing Manager
joshl@newsgator.com
View my page on NewsGator Widgets
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