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.

The Sweet Remains

As some of you know, my brother, Rich Price, is an rising star in the singer-song writer world.

He recently formed a new band, The Sweet Remains, with Greg  Naughton and Brian Chartrand.

Their new album, Laurel and Sunset, is now available on iTunes.

Definitely worth listening to!

Order it here.

Wolf Wanderings

My cousin is a wildlife biologist at the University of Montana. He just sent me an email from one of his colleagues about the wanderings of a wolf they had collared.

The email follows, but is an amazing reminder of the huge range predators require. Cool story.

and so it begins... :) One of my gps collared wolves is now famous! For those of you that don't know, this 1 1/2 year old female wolf was trapped/collared by a FWP wolf specialist for my project at the beginning of July. She was trapped in Paradise Valley outside of Gardiner, Montana. At the end of September she dispersed and over the following 5 months managed to travel all throughout the western half of Wyoming, through the SE corner of Idaho, NW Utah, and as of Saturday was located just outside of Vail, Colorado. I roughly connected her GPS locations and she has travelled over 1,000 miles as the crow flies!! Her data doesn't do much for my project (since I am using the collars to get accurate estimates of territory size), but it sure is incredibly interesting.

A Colorado news story on the wolve can be found here.

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.