One of my new year resolutions was to refresh the design of this blog with a new theme. I am happy that it took me less than a month to complete it and get it off my task list.
I am now using the stylish iNove theme, created by mg12. I like its simplicity, cleanses and how it brings the content to the front. I also find the RSS button implementation very cool (hover over the button to see it). Hopefully it will get more people to subscribe to this blog and consume my thoughts regularly via RSS readers or email.
I kept only the essential widgets on the site in order to shorten page load time:
Twitter badge shows the number of followers I have on twitter (if you are not one of them, now it is a good time to do it) and the latest twits.
MyBlogLog gives me information about the community who reads this blog
Disqus powers the comments and integrates very well with this theme and WordPress
Outbrain lets you rate my posts and provide feedback that helps me improve my writing over time
And of course, all external hyperlinks are enhanced using the product we have created at Snap – SnapShots
For analytics I use both SiteMeter and Google Analytics.
The last credit goes to Alex Sirota, founder of FoxyTunes, who took my portrait picture that is displayed at the top right corner.
I hope you will like like the new design as much as I do.
What is it? Well, if you read their about page you will find something like “an innovative open multimedia platform”. But to me it is hybrid between the Mac widgets experience and a innovative start page, built using Flash and running inside your browser. Yourminis (R.I.P) was probably the closest one to Navigaya in term of rich user experience. All other start pages (iGoogle, Netvibes, etc.) are not even close. Something in it also reminds me the very cool open source media center – Boxee.
Just tried out the new Gizmoz that was re-launched today with a nice pinky skin and a new logo. Their technology is pretty cool and the animated avatars that you can create & share are sweet.
It was a bit difficult to find a front face photo that meets their strict guidelines and I wonder if this might harm conversion rates…on the other hand it could create some business to passport photos‘ photographers (also known in Hebrew as ???? ???).
Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital) posted a great one on the different approaches Myspace and Facebook have related to Widgets and their role in the new social economy.
Too bad both environments still disallow a great utility such as Snap Shots to be added to users pages.
Last week Hart Woolery a lead developer at YourMinis created a new mashup using Snap Shots & Digg’s new API and submitted it to Digg API Visualization Contest.
Jason who works with me at Snap posted the story on the Snap blog and in a few days his story reached Digg’s home page.
This a very cool mashup and great product recognition for the Snap Shots product.
Just came accorss this mashup on John Montgomery’s blog. We have seen similar mashups created using Google Maps but this one demonstrates some of Popfly capabilities. I wish there were settings to define initial load state (location, timeframe of twitter messeages etc). But this is very cool.
Update: I had to remove the mashup from this post since it prevented the side bar from loading. If you are interested to see it, visit John’s blog.
Lijit is a a blog search engine that uses people, content and connections to influence on relevance of results.
They used data their spiders collect when visited over 8000 blogs to analyze the Widgetsphere and released thier findings a few days ago.
Below are a few highlights:
Snap is leading the Search category with almost 50%! The Snap Shotsstrategy pays off (Bloggers get free utility that enhances their site’s user experience, Users get a tool that saves them time while surfing the web, Snap gets search traffic and brand exposure).
Beyond Snap, bloggers also love Google Analytics & even more they love Google Adsense (I am sure Google also loves the data collected from blogs in order to optimize the Adsense algos). One question that I ask myself is what do bloggers do based on their site analytics findings? Are they using the two services in conjunction? How many apply site optimization techniques and change the design in order to improve Google Adsense CTR? How many change their writing style to make thier posts shorter in order to keep information above the fold (when people read in detailed post mode, not just excerpts)?
Although it is considered one of the most popular Web2.0 web sites, Digg badgets are available on only 1.5% of the blogs. I assume most of Digg’s traffic comes from other sources of information such as stories on large publications
Twitteris in a similar position – lots of noise but only on about 2.5% of the blogs. On the other hand they are the 3rd leading content widget (after MyBlogLog and Flickr).
14 companies operate in the analytics category. Many are free of charge and not a clear plan for monetization. I am sure there will be some consolidation soon.
I was a bit surprised to see meebome only at the 48th position. It might be related to the demographic of the sample site.
Last crazy idea – As this industry grows, and more and more companies enter the Widget space (check out the latest from Ebay), a financial institutation should create a Widget Companies/Categories ETF. This would be a nice interaction between the financial world & the blogesphere, and potentially another way to make money out of blogs.
Previous companies I was involved with include Snap.com (as VP of Products), Spark Networks (parent co of JDate as VP of Products), AOL (as Director of ICQ Mobile).
Some of the topics I am passionate about are social applications, web usability, design, mobile applications, sport and music.
