2007 Year of Third Party Widget Developers As the market dynamics and content delivery systems change 2007 is the year of widgets. I've written already about Current and Future eCommerce Challenges leveraging network effects, Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel, of course Facebook's Open Platform as a Serious Trend for Future Marketing and Facebook Sets Trend for Distributed Networks.

Web widgets bring the Web to you, prominent use is iGoogle (released a set of tools in 2005 called Fusion), Google's personalized start-pages are frequently used as an information resource and a preferred place to personalize trust worth and up-to-date news and services via gadgets.

Inspired by the success of iGoogle, Google introduced a new pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets: Google Gadget Ventures

1. Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to see developed further. You’re eligible to apply for a grant if you’ve developed a gadget that’s in our Google gadgets directory and gets at least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, you must submit a one-page proposal detailing how you’d use the grant to improve your gadget.
2. Seed investments of $100,000 to developers who’d like to build a business around the Google gadgets platform. Only Google Gadget Venture grant recipients are eligible for this type of funding. Submitting a business plan detailing how you plan to build a viable business around the gadgets platform is a required part of the seed investment application process.

Recently comScore introduced a new report called comScore Widget Metrix to serve advertisers wich relevant facts:

'“The recent explosion of user-generated content has helped create a worldwide marketplace for widgets,” said Linda Boland Abraham, executive vice president at comScore. “comScore is excited to be providing measurement for this developing content medium.”'

'comScore’s analysis of the top ten Web widgets worldwide revealed that photo-related widgets dominate the top positions. In April 2007, Slide was the top widget provider with a worldwide reach of more than 117 million unique viewers, or 13.8 percent of the total worldwide Internet audience. Other top photo-related widgets included RockYou (82 million viewers), PictureTrail (31 million viewers), and Photobucket (28 million viewers). '

'As more and more sites across the Internet employ Web widgets, the worldwide penetration will continue to grow. In April, widget penetration was highest in North America where 40.3 percent of Internet users visited a Web site with an embedded widget, followed by Western Europe (24.3 percent) and Latin America (17.5 percent).'

And of course there is already applications for the newly released Apple iPhone. I'm excited to watch this development to take off in the mobile space.

Labels: advertising, apple, google, networking, widgets

  ¶ '2007 Year of Third Party Widget Developers' posted by eA : 12:53 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Superior User Interface on Apple's iPhone Anytime, anywhere access to any multimedia services is in progress and addresses current trends in the telecommunications sector. Today's cellphones converge more and more into hybrids combining voice-centric and data-centric services.

Cellphone manufacturers were not capable to offer a convincing user experience so far, there is millions of products and services on every cellphone, but unfortunately beyond SMS nobody really uses them.

Apple iPhone attacks exactly that weakness and provides a superior and clever UI in terms of quality, video, photo and audio capabilities, leveraging a larger screen (320x480), omitting the physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on a touch screen and providing generous built-in memory (4-8GB).

It will be available on Friday in the US and by the end of the year in Germany. It hasn't been sold yet, but I think is has the potential to become the second iPod. Expectations are high, mobile carriers queue already...

The ability to anticipate consumer needs and to think outside the box are key factors to focus on consumer-centric innovation. The new core competence is creativity and new forms of innovation driving it forward are based on an intimate understanding of consumer culture.

Labels: apple, markets, usability

  ¶ 'Superior User Interface on Apple's iPhone' posted by eA : 3:05 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Global Brand Awareness: YouTube and Wikipedia among Top 5 Now An active creator today can enhance brand visibility and credibility, achieve customer intimacy or just simplify the process to find the latest information about new products and services allowing visitors to subscribe to blogs via RSS and be notified when posting something new.

Well, Google followed by Apple is leading the global brand awareness study conducted by brandchannel.com, but 2006 is the first time that brands centered on user-generated content entered the global top list: YouTube (3.) and Wikipedia (4.).

Global Top 10:
1. Google, 2. Apple, 3. YouTube, 4. Wikipedia, 5. Starbucks, 6. Nokia, 7. Skype, 8. Ikea, 9. CocaCola, 10. Toyota

More:

• YouTube's Rewarding Creativity soon
• Innovation Counts: Social YoUser Networks on Top of 2006 Google Zeitgeist
• Design and YoUser-centric Innovation
• Social YoUser Models in 2007
• Bye Bye German 1&1!
• Huge Market for Google Checkout in Europe
• Reaching People from 36 Countries Speaking 16 Languages

Labels: apple, branding, google, wikipedia, youtube

  ¶ 'Global Brand Awareness: YouTube and Wikipedia among Top 5 Now' posted by eA : 3:25 PM  0 comments links to this post