Back in September Google launched Google Maps with NYC public transportation and subway directions. They have been heavily advertising the new option, even grabbing a special place on the MTA home page (something I am not sure if HopStop ever received).

Today I found the following images of a "wrapped" Times Square shuttle train via SubChat. I thought the little AIM guy was dead… guess not! The shuttle is running a variety of wrapped cars as a test to see if they will go systemwide to help generate more revenue for the MTA.

Car 1953 pushes the entire url complete with http://!

Car 1946 shows off the markers

Some Subchatters are wondering what’s going on in the red circle. Apparently parts of the AIM people are "behind" the windows…

More AIM people

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MTV and Clearspring have announced a new distribution partnership today that will allow MTV to have their widgets shared via the Clearspring network. Today’s snnouncement comes a week after Clearspring refreshed their launchpad widget service. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

MTV will provide show- and media-related content in widget form and fans of the content can grab a widget and place it on their blog or social network page. MTV will also look to monetize the widgets as well.

By creating the set of widgets, MTV hopes to get tons of free advertising by getting users to distribute their ads for them.

Company

Widgadget

20-Word Description

Widgadget is the community portal for widget creation and distribution. It wishes to popularize widgets for users, bloggers and brands.

CEO’s Pitch

Widgadget is designed to help users, bloggers, brands and agencies spread their content exponentially, to get more websites/blogs traffic and to improve brand loyalty. It enables all users to see the best widgets and to create their own in three steps:

The registered user enters their feeds, then, he or she designs the widgets with sizes, colors, images, logo, titles, etc., and finally, adds information that enables the widget to get well-indexed in the gallery (titles, description, tags, etc.). Once created, the widget can be spread throughout social networks, blogs or desktops. The statistics allow every user to track word of mouth effect.

Mashable’s Take

Widgadget lets you create and distribute customizable widgets for whatever you want to promote, such as your website, blog, company, product, service, etc. Widgets can be created in Flash or Java, depending on where you want to use them. You can also embed your widgets on many different platforms, such as social networking profiles, blogging platforms (Blogger, Wordpress, etc.), websites and start pages such as Netvibes, iGoogle, Pageflakes, etc.

There are several competitors in this viral marketing widget space such as Gydget, Gigya, and Clearspring, which have all carved their own niches. For example, Gydget focuses mostly on the music industry, so most of their widgets promote musicians. All of these platforms provide easy to design widget tools and also a distribution channel with ways to monetize and analyze your viral marketing campaigns.

Widgadget offers all of the same core features without any major new features or niches, so it’s difficult to separate them from the pack. One of the things they do well is their customization for each member depending on what type content is being created and distributed. For example, their service is different for members creating widgets for personal use, business, blogs, or advertising for clients. Also, while creating widgets, the service’s performance seemed to be slightly better than the experiences I’ve had on some services such as Gydget for example.

Being able to track each widget and analyze the traffic and popularity of each creation could prove useful for future campaigns. In addition, being able to view all of the different widgets that you’ve created on one screen is very helpful as well. However, I was not thrilled with the inability to add any audio or video content to widgets, which is a feature many of their competitors have. This is significant because some studies have proven that some of the most successful viral marketing campaigns usually (NOT always) include some form of audio or video content. Being able to embed audio content like a song snippet, narration clip or video from YouTube has become a standard option these days.

Here’s a sample widget created on Widgadget in minutes for Mashable.

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Widget sharing service Clearspring has announced the launch of their latest version of Launchpad today. The new Launchpad allows for more customization than before including colors nad layout. Clearspring is now also supporting a variety of additional languages within their sharing feature.

The sharing menus within the widgets also prioritize the destinations based on each user’s history with other Clearspring widget interactions. The company has also launched "liquid sizing" which allows the sharing menu to morph to the right size automatically based on the size of the widget. Clearspring serves ads in the widgets on their free version.

The company has also pointed to new tracking analysis from comScore which shows them at 254 million unique visitors worldwide in September while I assume they are pointing to Gigya at 93 million visitors. comScore also notes that they had "reached" 101 million U.S. consumers for September. "Reached" is a tough word to use — I’d very much prefer to see actual interactions. Widget views are easy, interactions are a whole other ballgame. Part of the bump in numbers comes from Clearspring’s acquisition of AddThis.

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Earlier today we noted the arrival of The Karaoke Channel Online in the sing-along ventures market. Interesting enough, MySpace Karaoke too is pushing its name out into the news cloud to mark the debut of video support as well as a redesign, a new recommendation engine, and more options for users to share media.

Amy Walgenbach, MySpace’s manager of communications, says that the company believes online karaoke is analogous to music as blogging is to writing. Which can make for fairly deep or shallow analysis, depending on one’s perspective of that particular juxtaposition. But whatever the case, the features now being touted by the network, along with the statistics being flashed for the public - 4 million MySpace Karaoke users with over 500,000 recordings - are certainly ones that many karaoke fans will consider crucial to the art of jukebox heroism.

Design-wise, the new MySpace Karaoke is none too shabby. It’s uniquely MySpace-like, for sure (be that a pro or con, you decide), but give it a generous glance here and there, and chances are you’ll find it to be laid out quite well. Options are clearly represented, and jumping from place to place is easy. To be perfectly honest, I wish the well-publicized MySpace Music were as intelligently drawn as the network’s Karaoke site is. It’s that good.

Will video drive MySpace Karaoke’s usage numbers to much grander heights? I suspect not. The YouTube generation surely enjoys the limelight to significant degree, but the attraction of watching a user’s emulation of Elvis or The Beatles isn’t likely to pull a consistently big crowd. Unless of course there are to be phenomena among the mix, such as a LonelyGirl15 of harmonic allure. And since I wouldn’t put it past anyone to “break out” from the masses in such an unpredictable way, let’s just say that the new MySpace Karaoke is here and is open for goods and bads to strut their stuff. Let your voices be heard, if you dare.

Note: MySpace Karaoke recording can be heard and viewed on Windows- and Mac-based computers, but recording is only possible with Microsoft’s operating systems.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Will You Use MySpace Karaoke?SingShot’s YouTube for Karaoke - Now Free!Votigo Challenges Bix in Video ContestsBreaking: SingShot Acquired By Electronic ArtsThe Karaoke Channel Goes Online (Invites)eSnips Launches MicroPortalsYouTube Underground Contest

Source:Mashable!

Widget platform Clearspring turned some heads last month when it said that it would have reach equivalent to the “7th largest web property” following its acquisition of AddThis, a provider of widgets that enable easy social bookmarking from blogs and Web pages. Today, new data from comScore shows that while Clearspring’s reach is indeed huge, another player in the space – Gigya – is actually reaching a few million more eyeballs every month worldwide.

According to data from August 2008, Gigya reached 174 million unique widget viewers worldwide for the month, compared to 160 million for Clearspring. Slide sits in 3rd with 154 million viewers, with other competitors running significantly behind the top three (however, it should be noted that RockYou was not included in the report). In the US, Clearspring holds a slight lead over Gigya: 71.1 million viewers compared to 70.3 million, respectively. Those numbers might swing back into Clearspring’s favor soon though, since the AddThis acquisition is not yet included in the comScore report.

In any event, what’s responsible for the huge reach of the widget providers would largely seem to be the placement of widgets on social networking sites, where Gigya says that the average widget is viewed by 25 different people. While those numbers are big, the reach of widgets isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison with the page views racked up by leading Web properties like Google, Yahoo, and MSN because they aren’t nearly as easy to monetize yet.

However, Gigya (as well as other optimistic companies in the space I’ve spoke with recently) see this changing. The company cites recent Forrester research and says that “with 83 percent of people trusting a friend’s opinion of a product or service, widgets, and their ability to reach friend networks as user-endorsed content, represent an important marketing opportunity.“ Gigya launched its own ad network earlier this year to begin addressing this opportunity, while Clearspring and Widgetbox have their own offerings too.

On the other hand, a global slowdown in advertising could obviously put a major dent in these plans, especially if advertisers prove reluctant to try less proven formats like widgets. Additionally, it’s to-be-determined how users will respond to increasingly obtrusive ads being placed in their widgets – especially if the brands represented don’t necessarily mix with their personal tastes.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Feedjit Shows Arrivals & Departures of Your Site VisitorsStartMobile Launches a Widget to Sell Mobile ContentClipBlast’s Video Search Widget is Personalized TooFreewebs Holding a Contest to Find the Most Innovative Widget in the WorldGruvr’s Latest Widget Puts Your Band on the MapLemonade Launches Facebook App for Making MoneyEdgeio Offers A Paid Content Widget

Peter Gabriel and other backers of the free-streaming, ad-supported, as well as paid-for download service We7 already convinced Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI to provide some of their respective catalogues to the effort. Now the service has signed The Orchard, an international distributor with connections to more than 14,000 artists and over 1.3 million tracks.

The way in which tracks are being issued through We7 is not certain. Immediate availability of content is definitely not proving to be the case at present, as a quick search for material listed among The Orchard’s repertoire of artists shows a great number of absences. The same goes for the major companies noted earlier.

But if We7 co-founder and CEO Steve Purdham’s assessment of additions soon to be made is any indication, the service’s full launch is expected occur “in the coming months,” ensuring that the future will look richer than today. Probably, anyway. The wait will either be treacherous or easygoing, depending on one’s current assessment of the We7 business model.

Seeing as how We7 offers music rights holders the ability to offer streaming music as well as free (ad-supported) and paid-for downloads, one might think it to be striving to be a come-one-come-all type venue. Whatever fashion the consumer wants their music, in other words. But the availability of content is far from thorough, and the somewhat strange juxtaposition of paid and ad-supported downloads might make for an uneven experience.

Then again, if it is payment for songs that you wish to avoid, We7 can provide for such demand. Granted, the amount of popular content needs to be dramatically increased if We7 is to have any chance at amassing a substantial audience, but if one is to take the company’s abovementioned statement into account, that objective will eventually be realized.

When all is said and done, if we’re to draw any comparisons with the most recent free music newsmaker (MySpace), We7 will be something that resembles the social network’s opposite. Meaning music will be the primary attention getter, with friendly features tagging alongside.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Pump Audio Hooks Up with Redeye DistributionMySpace, Snocap Strike Deal with The Orchard, CD Baby and MoreWOW: CBS Acquires Last.fm for $280 MillionLast.fm Partners with The Orchard…Mashable Readers Fall AsleepSellaBand Signs New Partners for Worldwide Concert TourZune.net Goes Live, Wants To Make Music SocialCDBaby, Snocap to Sell Music on MySpace

Source:Mashable!

Clearspring, a fairly well-financed widget platform and advertising network has announced today the purchase of AddThis, the producer of one of the most popular widgets for allowing Web content to be easily shared on a variety of services like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Facebook. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.

Clearspring’s mission is naturally to serve as large an audience as possible, and the acquisition of AddThis certainly helps to expand the purview of its newfound parent and proprietor. AddThis is a bookmarking and sharing utility that has been adopted by a range of third parties, including media outlets such as Time, Fox, ABC, and CBS. MySpace is also listed as a client, making its reach quite notable indeed.

Of course, in buying AddThis, Clearspring itself now faces the competition of ShareThis, a service with a similarly broad base of use. And, as Kara Swisher of BoomTown notes, the fact that neither Clearspring, with a claimed $10 million in annual sales, nor AddThis, with “negligible revenue,” together make a profitable collection of services, it’s not yet certain where where their businesses stand.

Market share is clearly the key pursuit at the moment, with hopes that advertising revenue, grouped with data gleaned from interaction with Clearspring’s widgets and the AddThis component, will follow in kind.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Clearspring Adds Facebook to Widget Distribution OptionsClearspring Opens Community Platform for DevelopersClearspring Desktop Widgets Now LiveClearspring Launches Mobile Syndication WidgetsClearspring Gets $10M More for WidgetsClearspring Partners with PointRoll for Ads on your WidgetsClearspring’s New Widget Ads

It’s always fun when two very smart companies join forces to shake up an industry.

SplashCast Media and Clearspring Technologies have joined forces and put their respective strengths together to create a social advertising platform for consumer brands. The platform is designed to help advertisers and brands engage their audiences across all the major social networks. Now, you might be scratching your head still as to what this all means, so I’ll try to explain.

SplashCast and Clearspring are already players in the social media and social networking realm. Clearspring creates and deploys powerful widgets, especially for advertisers, and has a board of directors that includes Ted Leonsis of AOL fame and Nigel Morris, co-founder of Capital One. Splashcast is an online marketing service which provides a video platform for brands to engage in social advertising, viral broadcasting, and most of all, customer engagement. The SplashCast platform is really an ingenious piece of technology with a lot of major brands signed up already.

It also doesn’t hurt that both have strong investments to back them up.

So SplashCast has the platform for engaging audiences, but ClearSpring has the social networking distribution technology and expertise, as well as the analytics technology.

Now does the partnership make sense?

SplashCast will be able to use Clearspring’s widget expertise to help companies advertise across MySpace, Netvibes, Facebook, and the major social platforms. Splashcast relies a great deal on the viral sharing capabilities of its platform, and the Clearspring partnership only helps it increase its reach across the web’s most viral channels.

Few details have surfaced about the advertising platform yet, but if the technological and managerial expertise of both companies are any indication, Splashcast and Clearspring are, ahem, clearly going to make a splash in the social advertising realm.

Puns aside, this is a partnership we all need to watch.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Radiohead “In Rainbows” WidgetsSplashCast Adds New RSS to Media PlayerSplashCast Releases White Label Solution for Custom Facebook AppsSplashCast Gets $4M in Series A FundingSplashCast Player Gets UpgradedClearspring Adds Facebook to Widget Distribution OptionsClearspring Opens Community Platform for Developers

SplashCast and Clearspring have announced plans to partner together to create a social advertising network targeted towards consumer brands. SplashCast provides content management services while Clearspring is a widget distribution service.

Here’s how this new relationship works: SplashCast customers will create content and Clearspring will help distribute it through their widget distribution network. Clearspring will also inject ads into the widgets and also provide tracking and analytics services back to SplashCast.

I’ve said many times that consumer brands need to engage widgets and social media to push their advertising dollars further than buying traditional online advertising. This partnership should help push this concept further.

SplashCast raised an additional $3 million in venture capital earlier this year. NY-based KickApps partnered with Clearspring earlier this year on a similar distribution deal.

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During the panel that I moderated at Graphing Social Patterns this week, Jodi McDermott from Clearspring noted that companies can swap out what’s inside of a widget to extend the life of the widget. This is something everyone knows but is it something we’ve actually thought about from the publisher’s perspective?

Widgets are great as they provide more interactivity than any other form of advertising. Whether it’s a brand, a company, a Web site, a blog or any online service, widgets bring users closer than ever before. When a user installs a widget that was sent to them or one they found and shared, what terms of use come bundled with the widget? Most widgets I’ve run have never asked for my acceptance of any terms — they just allow for immediate installation.

Let’s assume that The Incredible Hulk movie purchases widget placements through a widget distributor. Fans of the Hulk install the fun widget on their Web sites and blogs. The movie is now out of theaters and the ad run is over. Can the widget distributor now stick anything they want into the slot? Do the Web sites have to approve the swap? At a minimum, should the Web site or blog publisher be notified of the change? The panelists believed that brands wouldn’t want to hurt their reputation with customers so they would never swap out the widget content with something controversial. While I agree with this, most brands are currently using a third-party to handle the widget management - can we trust these companies the same way?

The easy answer is to say that the publisher will see the changed content and remove the widget if needed. That’s easy to assume if the widget is installed site-wide. But if the widget has been installed on a specific content page, the publisher won’t see it until it’s potentially too late.

The IAB and other industry groups have begun to discuss standards for widgets and widget advertising. Should we begin to discuss standards for usage and widget lifetimes? When you install a widget, should there be a clear understanding of how the widget will be used, both today and in the future? I say yes.

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