‘Widget’ posts

Embedded Newspaper Jeff Jarvis

Posted by Marc Osofsky on 09 Jun 2009

Jeff Jarvis wrote an interesting blog on the Embeddable Newspaper that contemplates the potential for newspapers to extend their readership to third party sites. This is different from content syndication through RSS or APIs and more in-line with widgets in that it should provide a differentiated and complete user experience so the host sites don’t need | View post »

Sociable Ads: The Future or Advertising, or Just Another Banner?

Posted by John Eckman on 14 Apr 2009

Given the number of users who deploy ad-blocking software in their browsers, and the complete blindness to banner ads exhibited by most website users who haven’t bothered to deploy ad blockers, it isn’t surprising that the industry continues to seek a replacement (or at least a supplement) for the standard banner ad. Sociable Ads, a | View post »

Content Sponsorship – Media Companies Grow Online Revenue with A Web 2.0 Approach

Posted by Marc Osofsky on 17 Sep 2008

Most online media properties are looking for new ways to increase their online revenues that are consistent with their brand. Advertisers want to engage directly with their target audiences with meaningful, rich content. Media properties are looking to ad more rich, social media capabilities to their sites Media properties are constrained financially to invest in | View post »

Web widget provides engagement around comics

Posted by Marc Osofsky on 13 May 2008

Optaros has developed for King Digital, a unit of King Features, a web widget that brings extended benefits to both the host site TimesUnion.com and the King Digital. King Digital is now able to deliver all of the great content that they have in their collection and can provide community functionality along side that helps | View post »

Marketing to Women? Don't Ignore the Blogosphere

Posted by John Eckman on 18 Apr 2008

Brands who hope to market to women should no longer consider the blogosphere as an emerging or fringe channel, but should recognize the pervasive presence and increasing influence of women as authors, readers, and commentors on blogs. That’s the message of the BlogHer | Compass Partners 2008 Social Media Benchmark Study, based on a presentation | View post »

Open Source CMS – does the world need yet another one of these??

Posted by Optaros on 07 Apr 2008

Content Management is a very poplular category in the open source ecosystem. There are more than 2’000 open source technologies out there to handle, manage and distribute content. So why would we need any of the 200 new ones published over the last six months? Some of the existing 2’000+ solutions are very well known. | View post »

Media Widget = Content Syndication

Posted by Optaros on 24 Mar 2008

A lot of activity is going on right now in the industry regarding widgets and how and why to use them. It seems daily another announcement is coming out about how someone is making available content to by shared on blog sites, Facebook, MySpace, and other web sites in an effort to improve the user | View post »

Ecommerce Solution – ROI of RIA in ecommerce

Posted by Optaros on 13 Mar 2008

Rich Internet Application capabilities, such as whiz-bang Flash and AJAX capabilities do look cool. But do they attract return on investment for ecommerce solutions? Do they drive up conversion, average order size or deter abandonment? There does not seem to be definitive A/B testing consensus to prove it, but some RIA capabilities do seem to | View post »

Yahoo! Introduces Mobile Widget Platform

Posted by John Eckman on 10 Jan 2008

Not to be left behind in the era of the iPhone and Google Android, Yahoo! recently launched the Yahoo! Mobile Developer Program, which lets developers create widgets that users can install within Yahoo! Go 3.0. Instead of negotiating all the multiple device models (and carrier restrictions), this enables developers to create widgets using a simple | View post »

Mobile Widgets and the Internet Experience

Posted by John Eckman on 08 Jan 2008

Dr. Dobb's Journal recently ran a brief interview with Craig Cumberland, director of technology and application marketing at Nokia: "Mobile Widgets and the Internet Experience." In it, he offers the best explanation I've seen so far of why widgets are so important in the mobile internet space in particular. Although the industry has been talking | View post »