Widgetbox Update

On Jan 22nd, Widgetbox launched its first subscription service, Blidget Pro.

Since launch, CBS, eBay/Kijji, the Golden State Warriors, LA Lakers, the Michigan Times, Lockheed Martin, Steve Spangler Science, and hundreds of other content providers and marketers have become Widgetbox customers.




While the widgets are all unique, some important commonalities exist. Content providers, e-commerce companies, and brands all recognize that widgets represent a powerful medium for reaching new users, driving traffic, syndicating content, and improving natural search performance. While the recognized need is universal, the implementation details continue to be a major friction limiting adoption.

Prior to the Blidget Pro, a widget strategy required material expesnive custom development, one-off anlytics and tracking, custom creative, questions regarding distribution, and a host of complications that frustrated the ability to levearge the opportunity.

The Blidget Pro is based on several important concepts that help explain its success:

1. configuration vs customization - no coding required
2. leverages existing content - syndicates existing video, image, post, and twitter content
   
3. custom branding and linkouts - maintains brand promise and drive traffic
4. leverages Widgetbox's platform - syndication, installation, and analytics included
   

Importantly, Blidget Pro is another example of a freemium model in action. Every month, thousands of content owners use Widgetbox's free servcies to widgetize and distribute their content. By providing value-added features to paying subscribers, Widgetbox is building important customer relationships with companies looking for a set of premium features that help them better meet their widget goals.

Another important element of our strategy is self-service. In a challenged economy and in an emerging technology category, it is vital that prospects are able to self-discover, self-qualify, self-provision, and self-deploy. All day long, customers discover Widgetbox, purchase a subscription, and deploy their widget without ever talking to one of our employees. As with all new markets, expensive technology that requires a push-based selling model will limit adoption.

All of us at Widgetbox are excited by the uptake in customers and in the success of the self-serve model. We are busy working on even better features and premium offerings and will keep our focus on simple, self-service tools that differentiate based on ease of use, ease of adoption, and rapid time-to-value.

Blidget Pro

Widgetbox just launched an embeddable widget creator.

Simply enter your blog feed, youtube, twitter, hulu, flickr, or vimeo user id into the the widget below and build a branded, tabbed widget that aggregates all your content, like the BBC widget in the side bar, in seconds.

Branded Widgets

Quick post to highlight two widgets currently featured on Widgetbox.

The first is from Pampers, one of P&G's crown jewels. The widget, seen below, is a pregnancy calendar that provides week-by-week updates on fetal development. The user is able to configure the title, birth month, day, and year.

Pamper's widget provides dynamic, relevant, and personal information to the user. By using configuration parameters - such as the birth date - Pampers  allows each user to make the widget their own. Rather than simply serve an ad, Pampers is providing contextually relevant information to its target audience and inviting them to embed the widget on blogs, start pages, and social networks.



The second is from the CBS show, The Insider. Built by CBS using Widgetbox's Blidget Pro solution, the widget includes three tabs - Insider.com news feeds, video clips, and twitter posts - as well as custom branding. The Insider widget is a wonderful example of how Widgetbox can help content owners quickly and easily turn their content into attractive widgets that get installed across the web.

Introducing Blidget Pro

Widgetbox just released Blidget Pro: the next generation of our successful Blidget tool and our first subscription-based service.

The Blidget Pro is a far more powerful version of the Blidget - a tool that has converted nearly 100,000 blogs into widgets and served 2.3 billion impressions since its initial launch in 2007.

The Blidget Pro represents a major innovation and is the easiest, fastest way to turn all your feed-based content (videos, images, tweets, posts...) into dynamic, branded widgets.

Since launch, Widgetbox has served over 6.5 billion widgets and widgets are proving to be a very valuable way for publishers and developers to to reach new users across the web. However, to date, many publishers and developers have found the high cost of custom creative a friction in leveraging widgets. Priced at $3.99 per month, Blidget Pro is designed to be the self-service, no coding required solution of choice for those looking to widgetize their content assets.

The best way to appreciate the product is to see a few in action - all made using the solution.

Simpsons on Hulu - media company example with in-widget video playback
AMZN Top Sellers - e-commerce example
NextTag Affiliate Example - using widgets to sell phones and phone accessories
Mahalo Widget - publisher example with multiple tabs
Company Example - how to aggregate training videos, RSS feeds, etc
Blogger Example




Features:
- Easily create viral, branded widgets without any code
- Custom header, footer and/or body assets (jpg, gif, swf, png)
- Tab integration for multiple feeds and formats
- In-widget video integration for YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo (more coming soon)
- New visual layouts (slideshow, brick-mode, headlines with images)
- Custom widget linking (header, footer and/or body)
- Premium promotion on Widgetbox.com



To give the system a try, please visit the site.

Best and please let us know your feedback!