TechAddress

Yahoo Live to Shutdown; A Yahoo Problem or a Doomed Niche?

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:31:43 +0000

Company

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.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Live Video Startups Rejoice: YouTube is Sitting this One Out

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:31:19 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Google is under fire today over reports claiming the company failed to include any data for Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan on Google maps. Worse, some reports suggest that once the fighting broke out between Russia and Georgia, all relevant information about the latter was wiped from Google maps.

According to the Azerbaijan Press agency, all “the relevant maps went blank as soon as fighting broke out.” But Google contends that that assertion is simply false and it has not changed anything in quite some time.

“Google has not made any recent change to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Google Maps,” the company said in a statement. “We do not have local data for those countries and that is why local details such as landmarks and cities do not appear.”

In response to even more public outcry, Google Maps product manager, Dave Barth, said Google failed to include relevant street and city information because it wasn’t satisfied with available map data. But in an attempt to quell user distress, Barth said that Google would now input basic information about all of these countries instead of leave them blank.

And while some users are applauding Google for doing just that, I think it begs the question of whether or not Google should populate countries regardless of the quality of data, or if it should leave countries blank until it has the data necessary to make the maps as accurate as possible.

The way I see it, Google has no responsibility to its users to populate every country in the world if it feels it can’t provide them with the most accurate information available. Along those lines, why would users even want data that Google feels isn’t the best on maps of countries that aren’t generally the most searched for in the world anyway?

As far as I’m concerned, maps should be kept blank if the data isn’t sufficient to populate them and if users don’t like it, well, that’s their problem.

Source:Mashable!

Is Google-owned YouTube backing out of live streaming video because it’s too expensive? It would appear so, at least according to Michael Learmonth of Silicon Alley Insider. While it’s hard to fathom that any service would require more capital than Google is willing and able to spend, according to Learmonth’s sources, the cost of adding live video would be enormous – a 20 to 25% increase in the company’s infrastructure costs if only 10% of YouTube users adopted the service.

Considering YouTube’s huge user base in comparison to startups like UStream, Mogulus, and Justin.tv, that certainly sounds plausible. There’s also the fact that YouTube is still sorting out its own monetization strategy, so adding more costs and advertising inventory certainly isn’t a priority on the march towards profitability.

Meanwhile, YouTube staying out of the space should be cause for celebration at the live video startups. In a poll we conducted back when YouTube was seemingly poised to launch a live video offering, 69% of our readers indicated that YouTube would likely become the most popular video streaming service. On the other hand, Google staying out of the market also sends a statement that they don’t necessarily think live video is worth an investment at this time.