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Interview with Peter Yared: iWidget Funding and the Changing Face of Syndication Posted: 05 Feb 2009 02:00 PM PST Can widgets change the face of online advertising? It’s a question that we’ve been asking ourselves since widgets became mainstream, but we still don’t have a clear answer. We have, however, seen the evolution of widgets as they’ve become major interactive conduits for disseminating information. Thanks to platforms like Facebook’s opening up for development purposes, widgets have taken on a new occupation and place in the Internet’s timeline. Below is an interview with iWidget’s CEO Peter Yared, who speaks on iWidget and the company’s hopes for changing the face of the widget and advertising space. As iWidget, which recently raised $4 million and has upgraded its Social Syndication Platform, the company is now better able to provide deep integration with existing social media, taking content to the place where it’s most likely to be seen. SocialTimes’ Kristen Nicole: Tell me a little bit about iwidgets, the company background and how you got started in the widget space. iWidget CEO Peter Yared: In early 2007 I noticed that I could go a whole day in front of a computer without going to websites - most of the web content I used was served up through iGoogle and my RSS reader. I pulled up three-year web traffic graphs in Alexa, for a number of different websites and it became very apparent that site traffic was universally trending downward or staying flat (I blogged about it here: http://peteryared.blogspot.com/2008/04/websites-are-so-over.html). Clearly I was not the only one visiting websites less frequently. I realized there was a huge opportunity to help websites syndicate their content to the places where people were spending their time online. So, we created a drag-and-drop widget builder that gave users the ability to syndicate and monetize their content on popular destinations like Facebook and iGoogle. Kristen Nicole: Were you always a company that provided widgets as integrated applications for social networks? Peter Yared: We started the company in April 2007, one month before Facebook launched its platform. iWidgets was the only widget platform that started at the same time the social network opened up, and it is a big differentiator for us as we integrate deeply into social graphs and viral channels. The previous generation of widget companies placed an identical block of content on a wide variety of destinations, which is basically forcing a square peg into a round hole. We've created Widgets 2.0 by making the widget native on each destination. For example, on Facebook, the buttons turn blue to match the site's color scheme. iWidgets can also natively tap into the viral nature of Facebook. When users interact with an iWidgets application, the widget accesses viral channels like posting to newsfeeds and invitations are targeted based on a user’s friends’ profile interests. Visually, the widget becomes seamlessly integrated into the site. There are multiple views available for an iWidgets application: a narrow view for the wall and info tabs, a wide view for the boxes tab, and a canvas view to which users can click through. In effect, the widget is just like a hand-coded Facebook application, but you can build it, drag and drop, integrate easily, and publish natively to a variety of platforms including Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and iGoogle. Kristen Nicole: How does your product compete against larger brands like Clearspring? Peter Yared: We partner with Clearspring. iWidgets provides two things that Clearspring does not: self-service, PowerPoint-style widget building tools and viral deployment into the top social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Hi5. Clearspring provides two things that iWidgets does not: a wizard in the widget for users to deploy the widget into a variety of blog types, and some additional analytics that are useful for blog widgets. "Widget" companies are often lumped together, but once you start to understand the nuances and points of differentiation among the different platforms, it becomes very clear that we're offering products with major contrasts. Kristen Nicole: Do your users earn revenue from the ads you place on widgets? Peter Yared: If the widget gets over $100 of ad revenue from their widget in a month we give them 15%. This model provides a great incentive for users, because they have the freedom to experiment without getting burned if a campaign is unsuccessful. Who can complain about that in this economy? Kristen Nicole: What types of metrics, reports and analytics do your provide? Peter Yared: We partner with Google Analytics. Early last year Google Analytics added support for widgets (technically, they allowed multiple Google Analytics hits from one web page, which previously had been a no-no for analytics solutions). Most people know and already use Google Analytics and it provides the vast majority of what a widget campaign needs such as impressions, installs, and clickthroughs. Customers prefer that widget analytics be integrated into their existing analytics solutions, and Omniture and other analytics vendors are also rolling out widget analytics support that we will be able to integrate. Kristen Nicole: As far as advertising goes, do you currently have a platform? Peter Yared: We partner with large media companies that already have ads integrated into their media players. We help them create additional impressions for those ads on social networks and in exchange, we get 15% of the money made by those impressions. We do not sell additional advertising against our customers’ own ad sales teams. For the content companies that do not have advertising infrastructure since they are subscription based, such as the premium cable channels, we integrate an ad existing network. Kristen Nicole: What are your end goals with advertising through iwidgets? Peter Yared: It is virtually impossible for a content site to double their traffic at this point. In order to grow, they need to get their content out to where the people are, and that is what we help them do. iWidgets can deliver a company's content to the places online where the audience already is, and monetize it there. So ultimately, our goal is to help websites increase their ad revenue “off-domain”.

Jajah Enables Phone Calls from the iPod Touch Posted: 05 Feb 2009 12:01 PM PST Jajah is the latest to create a VoIP application specific for the iPod Touch. All you need is an iPod Touch and a decent WiFi signal, along with the Jajah application and you’re good to go. The appeal in such an application is the fact that there is yet one less difference between the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Granted the 3G network on the iPhone still reigns supreme when there’s no WiFi available (and when you actually have a 3G network signal). But having the option to make phone calls using your iPod Touch is certainly a benefit to those that would rather not sign their lives away to AT&T or hack their iPhone to work on another network. Jajah isn’t the first VoIP service to create an application for the iPod Touch. Others, such as Truphone, have taken to the iPod Touch in order to extend their functionality across a myriad of devices. And that’s Jajah’s ultimate goal here as well. From PCs to cell phone integration, and onto the iPhone and the iPod Touch, Jajah is expanding the number of devices on which you can access one of its many services. As Jajah has also made several milestones over the past year for integrating its products with other web-based services, it’s clear that Jajah is taking a multi-tiered approach to getting its product out in front of people. So there are a number of social networks that provide direct calling options between users thanks to Jajah integration. And for Jajah to continue growing, making its service as accessible as possible in as many places as possible is key. This lends itself to brand management and recognition, as well as malleability in terms of the devices and ways in which Jajah can be used. With competitors like Skype and Ribbit spreading their products across business services as well as devices, there are a number of VoIP companies looking to become the standard in the next wave of integrated calling options. Jajah was smart to offer a white label solution for the current iPod Touch release, meaning a third party service can brand this VoIP product and even integrate it with their own service. That should open the door for a number of variant applications that work on the iPod Touch and have VoIP option associated with their apps. The white label option may be quite promising for Jajah’s growth and reach on additional mobile devices.

hi5 Games Make More for Network’s Virtual Cash Posted: 05 Feb 2009 06:03 AM PST hi5 has just added Games to its social network. It’s yet another way to waste time on hi5, and even interact with friends as many of the games are socially-integrated. With this global launch, I actually think it’s important that hi5 focused on creating the games in a socially-integrated environment, because it extends the social capabilities of hi5 as a network and communications platform. It’s also interesting that hi5 has decided to launch Games as a native application within its network, avoiding the open platform approach where the majority of games would be made to available to hi5 users through third party developers. If you look at a platform like Facebook’s, there are several games available to users but they’re the result of third party developers that have taken advantage of Facebook’s open platform for both access and distribution. Some of these games are more social than others, and application games overall aren’t unified, even for some separate games that come from the same developer. There’s a reason hi5 is taking such a controlled approach to its new Games section, and that’s because hi5 sees the monetary benefit of being the central determining factor in extending games to end users. These games will be heavily tied in with hi5’s recently launched virtual currency, which is being applied to a number of different sections of hi5’s network including virtual gifting. When it comes to Games, hi5 users will eventually be able to use hi5 Coins for “premium content, advanced gaming features and status upgrades.” But even though hi5 isn’t taking an open platform approach, there’s still a dedication to third parties–namely brands. Games can be used as engaging types of advertisements, and in a similar way to third party apps on other platforms these games can be targeted to certain demographic groups within the hi5 network. So is this approach better than an open platform? It could stand to make more upfront revenue for hi5, as it positions itself as the monetary gatekeeper for direct transitions occurring around its new virtual currency. It also means that hi5 has more control over the type of content being extended to end users, and this includes the advertisements that appear in various applications and games as well as that advertising revenue. Time will tell which approach is better in the long run, especially when you think about the incentives behind stimulating participants for an open or closed platform approach. And there is always the option of incorporating aspects of both methods, considering hi5 is among the many Open Social supporters. The question still remains whether or not Facebook will eventually take a dual-ended approach as well.

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