Easy Website Chat as a Sidebar or by Widgets

Webby Chat is an easy to install chat for blogs and websites. The chat window simply becomes installed by a code snippet and may be used at websites or blogs. To be installed at blogs a widget code is offered. A nice feature is the possibility to hide the sidebar. By this the chat has no need for additional space within a site.

The service is a work in progress. Whereas it is fully functionable, further features will be added. As it often happens, people are welcome to submit their feedback and to submit own ideas for new features. The service is free. Later on the a full version with more features might be offered for a fee.

Widgets for Chat, Polls and Web Stats

99widgets is offering several useful web apps to become installed at social network sites, blogs and elsewhere.

At first there is 99chats, another widget for chat and live communications within social networks.

For those who want to know more about their users or to make some research there is 99polls. This app is available in various languages. Members may create own polls or share interesting polls of others by integrating it into own sites.

Last but not least there is 99counters for web statistics. The counter displays the number of visitors online and their locations as well as all time and daily visitors.

The FOLDEN Gagdet is here

As announced here comes the news section of FOLDEN.INFO. I realized it by using Google Gadgets. You may share the news by using the customizable gadget on a blog, website or within your Google account. Just click on the Google button and you will become relocated to a page with further information. Elsewise you may have a look or fetch it from within the website.

Yahoo Widgets used in a further Interactive TV Project

Yahoo has made other announcement about the use of its widget platform to be used for interactive tv. This time cooperation with Samsung has been communicated. Formerly in August a cooperation with Intel was announced.

The cooperation with Samsung has a clear time table and first tv sets equipped with the yahoo widget engine will already be available within 2009. So one may already talk about a product. By the availability of widgets at the tv set people will be able to receive personal information and to communicate. The platform is most flexible and new applications may become developed by using tools of Yahoo Widgets.

Widget Generator and Marketing Services by iWidgets

iWidgets is offering several kinds of widget services, that suits the needs of small as well as established publishers. The solution enables to distribute existing content across the social web and the sharing of content to increase the reach of content suppliers by viral marketing effects. To make a widget there is an easy to use wizard available, which allows to create widgets by drag and drop. The widgets are customizable and there are tracking facilities including profile information and social graphs.

There are two versions available at iWidgets, a free ad supported version and a viral marketing package.

Come2Play Widget and Social Gaming Platform

Come2Play is an online social gaming platform with some amazing opportunities. It is a platform with free multiplayer flash games to share and to embed at social networks and websites. This is already a great opportunity for gamers and to enrich sites. But by offering a couple of business opportunities Come2Play is much more.

There are business opportunities for publishers and developers available. To publishers (in this case blog or website publishers) have several options to embed content at their sites. The opportunities start with a simple widget integration followed by a customized widget gallery. In the latter case customization includes a free selection of ready to use games as well as co branding with an own logo. These game galleries may become shared by users and by this they are a free advertising and branding tool. The third option supplied is even more comprehensive. There are whole hosted gaming communities, which may become added to an existing project. At all these option there is monetization by sharing of advertising revenues.

The opportunities to game developers are amazing as those to website publishers. Come2Play offers a complete environment for game development and testing by an api. Created games may become hosted at the platform, which makes developers game publishers at the same time. Now developers are able to distribute their games through the Come2Play network or to share and develop a gaming community like it is offered to website publishers. Furthermore developers may earn even 100 % of the advertising revenue generated by their games.

For further information and advertising options visit the Come2Play homepage.

Developing Widgets on a PaaS for Flex

Adobe has launched a public beta platform for the development of rich media applications aka widgets. The platform is called Cocomo. Cocomo is a PaaS, which means that both the development tools and the application hosting is managed by Adobe. There are already a lot of cool features available like voip, collaboration and file sharing.

New Widget Platform for Data MashUps

youcalc is a new widget platform that has a directory and a community with widget creation tools. It is a vertical widget platform dedicated to data. Data is supplied by youcalc, which is gathering information by data sources at the web. The data can be used for analysis and calculations and to generate data presentations and research. What is making the youcalc widgets advantageous in comparison with presentations is the feature of up to date information. Visitors who see a widget on a blog or website will always see information that is updated in real time.

Cbox Chat Widget for Blogs

This is another great widget to enrich a blog and to enable visitors to communicate. Cbox is a chat widget, that is suitable for blogs. The chat box enables visitors to leave a message and to talk with each other. There are two versions available. A free version suitable for blogs and small websites and a premium version with more comprehensive chat room features. Both versions are compared at a chart. The premium version is just 2 dollars a month and upgrading from the free ad supported version is possible at any time.

Social Networking enabled Music File Storage Service

There are a lot of file sharing services to choose from to store various kinds of files. The new SoundCloud file sharing service now is going beyond the common features by offering file hosting and integrated tools for social networking and music distribution. It might even become described as a media management platform. SoundCloud is dedicated to host music files by serving the needs of labels and other music professionals. Beside the basic file hosting SoundCloud is offering a couple of networking tools. These do range from messaging and sending music files by email up to a music player widget that can be used for social networking and to publish and play music at social media pages and websites. Another very interesting feature is a widget that enables others to upload music files to an own account to introduce themselves or for other purposes. Last but not least there is a developer api to create own applications.

Adgregate Markets introduces Transactional Advertising

Adgregate Markets is another advertising network offering commerce enabled banners to facilitate searchable product information or even buying a product immediately within a banner advert. Adgregate Markets is calling their product a transactional banner, because the whole shopping process may happen within the adverts. The banners are widget based. But opposite to commerce widgets adverts may rotate like it usually happens to advertising at the internet. This is why Adgregate Markets may become described as an advertising network opposite to a widget platform offering widget development and distribution. But for advertising with Adgregate Markets there is a widget development facility, too.

The Social Shopping Business

Business Thursday: Social shopping enriches the shopping experience of consumers and offers some business opportunities. The opportunities to users are another way to find products and especially product recommendations and product reviews made by others. Depending of the features of a social shopping site members can take notes about desired products to bookmark and reseach items, discuss product features with others or share experiences. At some services there are product ratings and ratings for deals.

There are a couple of business opportunitis offered by social shopping sites. Some do share advertising revenue, some pay for reviews like it happens with paid posting at blogging and others do supply commerce widgets or even whole shops.

Favorite Thingz enables everyone to put a widget on a page with personal favorites. The items may be promoted at the web and social media services. Revenue becomes generated by selling a featured item.

Rate it all, Rasba and SharedReviews.com are shopping communities that do not require an own homepage to earn money. Rate it all is about reviews and does share the advertising revenue generated by activities. Rasba and SharedReviews.com both are social networking sites to discover new products and share them. Rasba pays, if an item is sold by the profile page, SharedReviews.com again shares the advertising revenue as well as possible commissions with the community.

The most comfortable solutions to participate in social shopping are own shops. Shop It and uSuggest are supplying customizable shopping sites or stores. Both are offering widgets to spread the products across the social web.

Social shopping sites are as social as the social web is. A strategy to get involved with own products is to encourage users to write reviews or to place a product widget at an own page or blog to facilitate a viral marketing effect. A solution to sell own products and to participate in social commerce is offered by Terapad.com. It is a shop solution equipped with blogging and social media marketing tools.

Click the following to find further social shopping pages.

VidyUp, a Video Upload Widget for Websites

VidyUp is a video upload widget, that may become placed at websites and blogs. It is a customizable widget that enables the upload of video from within a page and to embed the video. Uploads may happen to YouTube or Magnify.net, the supplier of the widget. After uploading a code to embed the video is supplied.

Magnify.net is a video solution provider offering further opportunities to manage videos that range from free video channels for websites to professional enterprise solutions. To bloggers by Magnify.net Publisher there are further ways to get a weblog video enabled. All options are represented at their product page.

Toolgether, a new Web Apps and Widget Platform

Toolgether is a new platform for the development, hosting and distribution of widgets. The service targets developers and private entrepreneurs. There are tools at the platform to transform existing applications into web apps and host them for distribution. At the same time Toolgether is a marketplace to monetize web applications. The service has just come out of private beta a couple of days ago.

Widgets for Live Chat and Communications

Some new widgets came up for live chat and communications. Even video chat on blogs is feasible.

The first one is SideSparks. It is a free chat application that enables live chat on a blog or website. What is great with this chat widget is its immersive web features, which enables chat with others at the blogosphere or the web beyond the own site. This feature is named tagged chat. It is tagging topics at participating sites to led people find interesting topics. Cross border features are great for sites with low traffic to populate an application.

Toksta is an instant messaging and video chat widget. It works by webcam and is designed for usage at social media sites. It is free and offering a business opportunity by revenue sharing of the advertising income.

Similar features are offered by mabber, a mobile connected instand messaging widget, meebo me with chat and Wengo Visio with audio and video. There are a couple of further services offering text messaging and phone widgets.

Internet Video and Interactive TV

A story about a future application for interactive tv by Yahoo and Intel had a lot of publicity today (emediablogger @ digg). What has been announced are widgets for tv, which means interactivity and personalized news at the tv set. That is interesting and good news for internet professionals as this again confirms that internet technologies will be something basic to interactive television which is expected for 2010 depending on regional developments. Interactivity at videos is most advanced at the internet as just posted yesterday interactive video is going mainstream. This gives reason to think about internet companies to have an impact on interactive television, which even already happens. A way to receive internet and internet video already exists by set top boxes and media servers like the famous TiVo. Whereas real interactive tv might be hard to imagine it is upcoming for sure. Already the Yahoo / Intel project shows that this will go far beyond the features available today like sending messages to a broadcast. If there are widgets and feeds involved nobody will stop people from sending videos and make their way to the screen. It will be interesting and fascinating to see how the convergence of television, internet and other media will happen.

If you are interested in this subject you will find information sources about future tv, up to date itv applications like epg's, developer resources and applications for interactive tv at FOLDEN.INFO.

Some Facts and Numbers about Widgets and Marketing

Widgets are popular and useful for information and marketing. In the following there are some articles with facts and numbers about the usage and money spend for campaigns.

This article includes some numbers and contemplates about different kinds of widgets:
comScore Widget Metrix Report: 615 Million People Viewed or Interacted With a Widget

The following is the most controversial article I read about marketing with widgets. It emphasizes the costs and reflects the thoughts made at the former article. It is clear that companies may spend a large amount of money for a campaign, if they are able to attract a large audience. Opposite to this there are easy ways to develop widgets and to get into this business:
Tiny Widget Apps Can Lead to Some Big Bills

This is a success story about a campaign using widgets:
Widgets drive Web readers

Conclusion: There are most different approaches for campaigns using widgets. The market has already developped and embraces advanced advertising technologies like behavioural targeting. Furthermore marketing with widgets indeed has already influenced the advertising market by the requirements of new metrics like engagement, which means measuring the activity within a web applications and the time spent with it instead of page impressions. Another trend that came up with social media marketing is the targeting based on profiles and relationships instead of using demographic data.

Social Media and Widget Advertising Networks

Widget advertising has already been mentioned as one business opportunity with widgets for marketers and publishers at the introduction of doing business with widgets at the post Widgets, Advertising, eCommerce and Widget Development. This article is introducing several social media and widget advertising networks, which reaches the social media sphere and do offer social media advertising and monetizing opportunities to developpers of rich web applications, publishers or owners of pages at social networks.

At first there is Ad Chap calling themselve an ad network for social networks. They are specialized in facebook and offering various advertising formats for facebook applications. Advertisers may target this group of publishers within Facebook. which is one of the largest and most popular social networks. The ad network relies on a self service for advertisers and delivers real time statistics. Another advertising network targeting Facebook is the fbExchange. On the publishers side they are offering opportunities to developpers of applications.

Clearspring is a whole widget network offering various services. They got a platform for the distribution and viral seeding, management and tracking of widgets. By their Widget Media Page advertising and monetizing opportunities are accessible.

Cubics is a pure advertising network. They are specialized to serve developpers of social network applications and offer precise targeting to advertisers by demographic data.

gigya again is a widget network with a couple of services like viral seeding. They are offering advertising and business opportunities to site owners, developpers and the development of branded widgets to companies.

Google GadgetAds is the web application part of Googles AdSense and AdWords advertising networks. There is a lot of useful information at their introduction like case studies and success stories. Actually this program is limited to advanced users.

A couple of further widget advertising networks are offering more specialized options like affiliate programs for particular products, product or music recommendations and even own shops or shopping within widgets. If you are interested in this, please visit Commerce Widgets at FOLDEN.INFO and for further advertising and marketing opportunities at social networks Social Media Markertng.

Widgets, Advertising, eCommerce and Widget Development

Business Thursday: Widgets are small internet applications, that may become installed at web sites and social media pages or at the desktop and mobile phone. Synonymous names are gadgets, rich internet or web applications. Like a software programmed for a particular purposes, widgets may be used for most every meaningful intention. Technically widgets are client side applications, which means that applications become loaded just one time or installed like software. Then only the information becomes updated. Typical purposes are the distribution of information or media, games or communications purposes like chat, messaging or even video conferencing. Widgets are most popular to obtain information at internet devices and at social media. They have become such important that even the W3C internet standardization body has launched a group called WebApps Working Group aiming to define standards for widgets and other client side applications. Popular widgets are loaded millions of time and some networks deliver billions of impressions daily.

To participate in this business opportunity there are several ways depending on the targets and it might be easier that the introduction has sound. By developing a widget enterprises and even homepage owners may get viewers and visitors. A popular example for blogger are blogrolls. Depending on the approach widgets may easily become generated by automatic means, the widget generators. Enterprises may develop branded widgets themselves or by a service to better deliver a message.

The second opportunity is the widget advertising, which is mostly the same as on the web. But additionally adverts could be included within a widget. As a widget is either the marketing tool itself or carrying adverts, commercial widgets may be found and distributed at a company homepage or at widget directories, advertising at widget advertising networks. Popular affiliate widgets for example are the amazon widgets, which are customizable to display particular products.

Widget generators, development kits and services often are offered by widget directories, too. So does LabPixies, a widget directory offering advertising services, too. Another directory is SpringWidgets, which is offering a widget development kit. Widgetbox again is offering an easy way for developping by its widget generator and syndication services at the directory. The latter is what Widgipedia does for desktop, mobile and web widgets. YourMinis is directory and does offer further services. Google and Yahoo both do offer a directory and a development suite by Google Gadgets and Yahoo Widgets.

Do not miss the feed to obtain further information about widgets soon and feel free to bookmark and spread the word.

Big Money at Social Media

I read two most interesting articles about where the big money is at social media. Social media is big business, but a most discussed issue is how social networks may monetize. CPM advertising rates are low at the social space, but there are alternative earning opportunities. According to the articles mentioned below the big money is spend for the development of rich internet applications or widgets used for advertising actually. Widgets are applications able to deliver information or entertainment and may contain banner adverts or are the advertising medium themselves. Being the advertising medium themselves widgets are great branding and retention tools. Typical content of widgets may be games or up to date information.

The most interesting part to me has been the introduction of virtual economies at the second article. Virtual economies or currencies are reward systems, where users of these applications may earn points. This points may become exchanged at virtual economy services into real money, goods or may be used for other stuff supplied within the widgets. Do not miss the feed, as more about widgets is coming up soon at emediablogger.

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