Interview with MIS Financial Review

During my time in Sydney, I spent some time with Julian Bajkowski, a reporter with MIS Financial Review, which covers the Australian IT market.

The article he wrote on our talk and Widgetbox can be found here.

Thanks to Julian.

Widgetbox and Atlassian

Widgetbox and Atlassian just announced an integration that allows Confluence users to add Widgetbox widgets - over 120,000 - to their wiki.

Venturebeat covered the story here.

Atlassian is one of enterprise software's real success stories with over 14,000 customers in 109 countries. Confluence is their flagship wiki product and the following video illustrates how Confluence users can add relevant widgets to their project pages. Other Atlassian products include Jira, Fisheye, Bamboo, and Clover.

Founder Dilution Survey

Sim over at Polaris Ventures is looking for founders to help him quantify dilution over the life of a company (financings, stock option refreshes, etc) and the impact of fund raising on the ultimate stakes founders enjoy in their companies.

He will be sharing his findings on his blog.

Take the survey here.

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.

Media09

Last week, I was fortunate to spend three days in Sydney as a guest of Fairfax Digital, one of Australia's leading media companies. Fairfax's assets include the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Domain, and RSVP, Australia's leading dating site.

Fairfax Digital and XMedia Labs organized a one-day digital summit, Media09, that included speakers from around the world. Speakers included, among others, media executives from the BBC, Guardian, Washington Post, Wikia, Blue State Digital, and Widgetbox.

Ben Self, from Blue State Digital and the Tech Director for the DNC, provided a fascinating synopsis of the Obama's use of the Internet to manage online fundraising, constituency- building, issue advocacy, and on-line social networking; see Obama Case Study for more details.

I really enjoyed my time in Australia - the city spectacular, the people welcoming, and the conference a terrific overview of the media strategies of some of the world's leading media companies.

My talk centered on the lessons of Ray Oldenburg's classic book, the Great Good Place, which introduced us to the framework of the Third Place. My talk is embedded below.

Thank you to XMedia Labs and Fairfax for a wonderful trip and a super day.

The Third Place

View more presentations from pricew. (tags: widgetbox media09)

The widget below is one I made for Fairfax to demonstrate the power of aggregating content via Widgetbox's widget platform in order to better reach the Internet users aggregating in today's on-line 3rd places.

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!

book recommendation: The Shadow of the Wind

Getting on a plane? Keep a list of must-read books?

Over the holidays, a friend casually suggested that I read a book by the Spanish author Zafon. 7 hours later, I had finished what is the most wonderful book I have read this decade.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's, The Shadow of the Wind, is simply amazing. The book, written in 2001, takes place in post-war Barcelona - the narrator, Daniel Sempere, is the teenage son of a bookseller. After finding a book by the little-known auther, Carax, the boy discovers that, despite the brilliance of Carax's work, all his books are being destroyed one by one.

As Daniel seeks to uncover why, he stumbles into a spider's web of forgotten murders, doomed love, and secret pasts.

The book is a gift and one to savor. Let me know if you enjoyed it and if you can suggest one that proved equally moving to you.

Change.gov Widget

For all my Obama friends, please find below a Change.gov widget that will help you track the transition and the Office of the President-Elect over the next month.

Amish Jani - New Blogger

My good friend and former colleague, Amish Jani, is now blogging. 

Amish is a MD with FirstMark Capital and one of the smartest venture guys I know.

His new blog, Just Getting Started, covers the venture and tech industry and is definitely worth adding to your blog reader.

The End of Wall St's Boom

If you liked Moneyball and Liar's Poker, I strongly recommend that you read Michael Lewis' latest essay, "The End of Wall St's Boom."

Brilliant.

Tenacity

We live in a world of challenge and adversity. I am sure that each of you, at times, feels the weight of expectation and the burden of failure.

Take heart, the greatest of successes are forged in trying times. Like Job, Lincoln serves as inspiration.

A list of Abraham Lincoln failures (along with a few successes) follows:

• 1831 - Lost his job
• 1832 - Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
• 1833 - Failed in business
• 1834 - Elected to Illinois State Legislature (success)
• 1835 - Sweetheart died
• 1836 - Had nervous breakdown
• 1838 - Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
• 1843 - Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
• 1846 - Elected to Congress (success)
• 1848 - Lost re-nomination
• 1849 - Rejected for land officer position
• 1854 - Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1856 - Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
• 1858 - Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1860 - Elected President (success)

Feel better?

Book Recommendation: The Snowball

Warren Buffet is well recognized as the world's best investor and as a man blessed with making the complex simple.

Roger Lowenstein wrote a wonderful biography of Buffet, The Making of An American Capitalist.

Now, Alice Schroeder, a former insurance analyst, brings us The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life.

Warren Buffet allowed Schroeder unparalleled access to his records, business partners, and family and delivers a masterful portrayal of a master businessman.  In return, we are granted valuable and entertaining insights into Buffet's life, philosophies, and world view.

Occam's Razor states that, "all things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." Of all of Buffet's strengths, the trait that leaves the greatest impression on me is his ability to make simple that which others make so complicated. In that simplicity, the confusion fades and things appear so clear and easy to understand.  

His ability to digest ungodly amounts of information - 10Qs, 10Ks, CNBC, the paper, magazines, deal pitches - and to identify signal amongst the noise is simply amazing.

He is loved not just for his brilliance, but also for his complete authenticity - an amazing sense of self and constancy in the face of a world fraught with change and uncertainty.

While few us, maybe none, will replicate his investment track record, there is much to aspire to in regards to his clarity of thought and his internal compass that maintains a steady heading in a stormy world.

Travel Schedule

In the next three weeks, I am lucky to be speaking on three great panels.

Digital Hollywood's Widgets as a Platform on Oct 28th
Widget Summit's Meet the Galleries, on Nov 3rd
Pubcon's The Wonderful World of Widgets on Nov 13th

If you plan to be at any of the events above, please let me know. will @ widgetbox.com

Another Chapter in the Life is Stranger Than Fiction Column

Who Could Make This Stuff Up?



PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, embroiled in an adultery scandal and a tight race for re-election, admitted Friday to having at least two affairs but insisted he broke no laws and will not resign. The first-term Democrat conceded that one of the affairs began as he was running on a family values platform to replace Mark Foley, a Republican who resigned amid revelations that he sent lurid Internet messages to male pages who had worked on Capitol Hill as teenagers. Mahoney, 52, apologized to his wife, his daughter and his constituents, even as he maintained he hadn't been hypocritical.

Announcing the Widgetbox Blog Network

I am excited to announce the launch of the Widgetbox Blog Network.

The Widgetbox Blog Network connects bloggers across 29 channels (from art to celebrities to music to politics) using a single widget that dynamically showcases content across all of the blogs in that channel. You’ll notice, for instance, that I’ve joined the Tech News Channel and placed the widget in the top right of my blog template. On each page view, new blog posts are dynamically presented from other bloggers also in the Tech News Channel - and likewise, my blog posts appear on their pages… effectively driving highly relevant traffic across the network and taking advantage of Widgetbox’s large audience / community.



Why are we launching a blog network? Simple, at Widgetbox, bloggers and blogs are the core of our community and the new Blog Network:

- Widgetbox has widgets on over 250,000 unique blogs
- Blidgets (blogs we help turn into widgets) have been served over 1.5 BILLION (!) times
- Widgetbox now reaches over 65 million unique each month (verified by Quantcast)



You will also notice that the widget is customized for my blog – showing a badge of my blog and its rank within the Channel (I’m #8 - need to blog more).

Joining is easy:

1. Visit http://www.widgetbox.com/network and select the Channel that fits your blog
2. Click the Join This Network button, select your blidget (or create one) and then grab the Channel Widget’s code
3. Add the code to your blog template and press activate

I attach a copy of the PowerPoint briefing here:

Widgetbox Blog Network from BlogWorld

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: bloggers blogworld)

Websites Losing Relevancy for Brand Strategy and Consumer Engagement

Peter Yared's post, “Websites Are So Over,” is a great read. Using Alexa data, Peter illustrates the dramatic decline in daily reach for the websites of some of America’s greatest brands; such as Apple, CNN, Fedex, Disney and others.
The charts below are from Peter’s post and they illustrate the massive fall off in reach experienced by members of the Fortune 500. The CNN daily reach per million data below is particularly telling, a significant relative decline over a two-year period.








The measure of web marketing success used to be measured in page views, visits, and reach. Millions were spent on powerful sites and on related marketing campaigns that focused on driving users back to the company web site. In today’s age, however, of RSS readers, social networks, and huge numbers of user-generated sites, the paradigm has changed. The goal can no longer be simply to funnel traffic back to cnn.com, but rather the new goal is how best to take the content, applications, and ad inventory from cnn.com to the users.

Widgets, social media applications, and RSS feeds are the modern day web marketers tools and the model has inverted from driving users to content to driving content to users.

Peter is also the founder and CEO of iWidgets, a newly launched widget and social application builder that allows brands to take their content and services onto the distributed web and off-domain. The service is currently in beta and well worth checking out. He launched with CBS and is helping to make social syndication of tier one content a reality.

Quick Feedback: On-line Ad Growth Rates

A friend and great Internet analyst just pinged me on my prior post.

He sees the following growth rates for the on-line ad market

Q3: low teens
Q4: mid single digits
2009: flat

Mix: display down with search growing at display's expense.

Key point: does not see the 20% growth forecast earlier this year by many market watchers.

How will experimental budgets hold-up?

The need to prove efficiency, engagement, and performance will be critical, as will the ability to prove differentiated reach.

Where is Money Going?

The Dow fell today 450 points or 4.6%, the S&P 500 fell 57 points or 4.7%, and the NASDAQ fell 109 points or 5%.

Morgan Stanley fell 24% and Goldman, the bluest chip financial firm in the world, fell 14%. GOOG feel $28+, or 6.42%, Yahoo! fell

Where is the world putting its money - gold, up close to $80 dollars today.

The attached widget tracks the price of gold - the price of gold is like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The faster it goes up the greater the worry regarding inflation and fiscal/economic health.

Again, I find it fascinating that the Bay Area remains largely insulated from the downturn impacting the world's money centers - NYC and London, in particular.

The next few months will help us understand if on-line budgets prove counter-cyclical - Google's next earnings report will be instructive. To date, I can only turn to anecdotal evidence which suggests that on-line spend remains robust, with a particular strength in performance-based spend. Of course, budgets are set months in advance and it may take time for the current economic malaise to ripple through.

As 2009 budgets firm up, we will see if the performance benefits of on-line advertising protect the sector from a downturn. The current growth rates project 20% y-o-y upticks in on-line spend. For start-ups, the overall growth rate certainly matters, but more importantly advertiser appetite for experimenting with new mediums and technologies matters more. The on-line market's growth can slow but IF advertisers' appetites for trialing new ad channels remains robust newer markets will grow faster than the overall market.

Two data points to watch closely - total on-line ad market spend and mix/reallocation within the total spend. For start-ups to grow, the overall allocation and the allocation to experiment with new technologies and forms of advertising will matter a great deal.

Book Recommendation: Supreme Courtship

Politics in America is bordering on the absurd. While the economy is in turmoil, we can't stop reading about field-dressing a moose and lipstick.

The mendacity, absurdity, and sick humor of the current political age is brilliantly captured and skewered in Christopher Buckley's new book, Supreme Courtship.

Buckley tells the tale of President Vanderdamp and his efforts to nominate a new Supreme Court justice. Unfortunately for the President, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee wants the job. The greedy senator blocks two incredible candidates, one for writing, at the age of 12, a critical film review of To Kill a Mockingbird for the school paper. Clearly, a racist.

Ticked off at the Senate for rejecting his nominees, the President decides to get even by nominating America's most popular TV judge to the Supreme Court. Judge Pepper - a hot version of Judge Judy - prepares for the nomination process and the insanity begins.

Great read and a book that perfectly captures the disfunction of Washington.

Wall St's Demise and the Impact on Tech

Imagine waking up to read the following headline, "Oracle Declares Bankruptcy, Cisco Sold to Microsoft in a Cut-Rate Deal."

The figurative and literal pillars of the financial economy are falling like dominos - Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, and now, amazingly, Merrill Lynch is being sold to Bank of America.

Perspective? 

It is hard to fathom the depth of the financial crisis on Wall St, yet alone the seismic shock waves that are rippling across the country given the litany of failed and failing firms. The CEO of Bank of America expects 50% of the nation's banks to fail. Yes, that would be 50% of the 8,500 banks in the US.

The tech downturn saw marginal firms fail, however, the financial market failures are not only of a much larger magnitude, but also the names in distress are of a far different caliber. The firms failing today are the bell-weathers of the industry and foundational institutions. 

Walking up Park Avenue, or through Times Square and the size of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, etc literally loom over you.

Thousands of employees, billions of dollars, the credibility of regulators, executives, and the ability of markets to effectively price and manage risk are gone.

To date, the shock waves seem to be passing Silicon Valley by. 

What will the impact of this unprecedented meltdown be on Silicon Valley and on the Internet sector in particular? To what extent will Wall St's failings and the large credit downturn impact Internet/tech companies?

Will venture firms change behavior or their appetite for certain types of risk? 

No one knows...the future is uncertain, however, start-ups can work to reduce risk by exercising real spending discipline - working hard to reduce non-core expenses, thereby delaying capital raising and extending the runway.

Great start-ups play on long-term secular trends - on-line media consumption, mobile Internet, on-line advertising, etc. For us in tech start-ups, I see two important gut-checks - are we working and riding major secular trends and are we investing in growth in reasonable and prudent ways?

So much in life lies beyond one's control. If one is riding a major wave of change and spending wisely to leverage it, then keep your head down and keep making it happen. If you are not....