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.

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.

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Source:Mashable!

Yahoo has announced that it will be shutting down Yahoo Live, the company’s attempt to cash in on the live broadcasting trend popularized by startups like UStream and Justin.tv. According to the Yahoo Live blog, “… we constantly evaluate our early-stage products and sometimes have to make the hard decision to move on, in order to continue exploring new territory and developing new products.”

The service first debuted in February this year, with a few novel features like offering up simultaneous multiple streams (though competitors quickly followed). Nonetheless, live video isn’t cheap – especially when you’re on the scale of a company like Yahoo. After persistent rumors that it would enter the live video space, Google said that it would not be adding the feature to YouTube anytime soon because of the huge bandwidth costs that would ensue. And Google is in a much better financial position than Yahoo at the moment.

So, while the shutdown of Live could be viewed as a Yahoo problem – the company is in the midst of layoffs with its stock trading near multi-year lows – there has to be some concern over the implications it has for live streaming on the whole. While some of the startups in the space have shown decent traffic growth over the past year, if Yahoo wasn’t able to attract a big enough audience to make it work, you have to wonder if the other, considerably smaller companies pursuing the niche will find enough users to make a real business of it.

On the other hand, the shutdown could simply be a part of broader cost-cutting at Yahoo, and not necessarily a verdict on the state of live video. Allen Stern reports that the company might have also shuttered Yahoo Kickstart, a career site for students and recent graduates.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:The Daily Poll: What’s Your Level of Interest in Lifecasting?Yahoo Answers Dominates Q & A - No Wonder Google Gave UpRIAA Asks for Lower RoyaltiesYahoo to Close Podcast DirectoryRumor: Yahoo Soon To Offer DRM Free MP3sThe Daily Poll: Live Video – Who Will Win?The Daily Poll: Catching Up Socially

Magnify.net, the company that lets you create your own niche video channel, will announce a plethora of new features this week - they’re expected to go live on Tuesday.

First up, they’ve improved their drag-and-drop function to include your members on your Magnify frontpage, and block the members you don’t want on your site. They’ve also added a discussions board and a chat widget, powered by Gabbly to encourage member interaction on your site. Other widgets include buttons for bookmarking, and Paypal integration to accept credit cards.

First mentioned on Mashable back in February, Magnify has always been very inclusive in the video hosts they allow you to search from, and now they’ve added DailyMotion and Metacafe to the list. They’ve added to their search capability as well, allowing you to find a YouTube video based on someone’s username, their favorites, or the most popular videos. This is an interesting integration that I haven’t seen from any other third party video aggregating service. Another important addition is RSS integration, allowing others to subscribe to your Magnify site and get optional alerts when a new video is added by you or your members. Also important is their provision of support channels via screen-cast videos offering step-by-step instructions on how to manage your Magnify site.

In all, these new features are user-focused and aim to improve interaction and viral growth. Perhaps Magnify could become the Ning of video - less heavily integrated than white label video solutions, but offering anyone the ability to instantly create a niche video site.

Show RSS Feeds on Your Magnify Homepage

Recommended: Hi5 Layouts at Mashcodes!