During Widgetwebexpo, I noticed that there was alot of discussion about paid spread of widgets and almost none about organic spread of widgets. This caused me to change my presentation. There were companies represented there and widget teams that I felt could really benefit from some simple techniques of how to spread a gadget. So I made up a new presentation the night before.
The slides are just the main points of what I discussed, but you might want to check them out.

I would also like to highlight a great presentation about organic widget spread from Google I/O, I spoke of it earlier, but now the entire presentation is up. I recommend watching it.

And here is a great article about getting into widgets, and highlights Widgetbox, one of my favorite widget platforms.

I was going to be discussing Android today, but instead you can just watch the sessions themselves. Here is “An Introduction to Android” to get you started.

To see which session videos are up (so far there are 77) go to the Google I/O session page

Google Apps Engine

Some quick answers to what Google Apps Engine offers, and why you might want to care about it.

A few months ago, Joyent (and Dell, and Facebook) announced free hosting (for a year) to budding application developers. These free servers were designed to scale and help developers who had applications which “took off” in other words, in the world of widgets and Facebooks apps, it is a real scenario to have 12 users one day and then tens or hundreds of thousands of users the next.

I took one of these servers and it performed quite well, but the endless changes of terms is about to make me drop it, as is the cost of continuing the service.

Enter Google App Engine

In essense the Google App Engine is a free way to host stuff. Ofcourse Google would slap me for explaining it that simply, but for a majority of users, that is exactly what it is is good for.

In the unlikely scenario that you get like 5 million monthly users or more you might have to pay like 20 or 30 bucks to continue using it, (see more pricing and App engine details here) I don’t think anyone with 5 million users will complain

I posed a couple of direct questions to some of the Google Apps representitives, and received itelligent, and blunt answers. Refreshing. Basically I noted that they were going up against a host of competitors who were often giving the same or more away.

Amazon has been wowing many developers with some great hosting options, and Joyent’s offer or a free year went over so well that they hardly could keep up with the demand.

They knew Joyent, Amazon and others were competitors, but felt (unsurprizingly) that their product was better.

I agree.

At Google I/O the announcement was made that Google App Engine was now accessible to everyone. To get yours, just go here.

Videos from Google about the App Engine have received a healthy viewership the video below has received around 150,000 views.

The amount of actual developers actually interacting with the Google products and APIs is very telling.

Google App Engine is something I personally like because it further takes away restrictions that people may have if they lack money or live in a country where there are no banks or credit cards.

Want to start a internet business? Cost: 0 dollars.

Good stuff Google.

On the Google gadget front I learned an interesting thing (and also got a sweet Google code tshirt) at the visualization desk….

 There is a Google visualization gadget directory. Neato.

Also there has been extensive additions to their documentation, so if when this feature came out it looked too confusing, you may want to revisit it.

My favorite session was probably…

Best Practices for Spreading Apps

This session was impressive for it’s very real approach to the problems of spreading your App or gadget in a responsible way. The session speakers were very well versed in the details, and did a great jobs highlighting the practical reasons for acting responsibly (and with the user in mind) while designing your apps.

As a quick note, at Google I/O, MySpace put out a firm commitment to only listing apps that are useful, that do not rely on viral or spammy techniques for their spread. As most Facebook app developers know, Facebook has taken very strong steps against such techniques as well.

The session began with an overview of methods in which apps spread…

Forced Invite – Viral (where you have to invite friends prior to using the app) This method is being disallowed in virtually all platforms

Create incentives Invite – Viral (where you get points or incentives for inviting other to use app) This method would include the vampires and zomb type.

Install after using -Organic (user can interact with app without installing, and make their own choice to install)

One to One-

    Word of Mouth (people hear good things about your app, and decide to try it) Invite with meaning (a meaningful invite in the sense that the reason someone is inviting their friend to use the app is because they actually enjoy it)

Activity Streams (news feeds, messages, etc.)

Directory listing (someone finds your app in the directly and decides to check it out)

After discussing these different methods, they quoted the very smart Andrew Chen…

“If you behave like a disease, people will develop an immune system”

Vivian Li then spoke on the subject of…

Organic (rather than viral) app growth.

Briefly, here are the five steps she reccomended for organic app spread and growth.

One: Don’t Make users decide first

By this she means not to force invite, and to allow the user options to interact with your app without having to install it or invite your friends. It is pretty frustrating when you have to install an app just to see a message your friend sent you, which has led to “App fatigue”

Two: Engage users within social content

Example of this would include offering trading, competition, or comparision in a real social context. For example cosider using things like “your friend Sarah like this movie clip, do you?” By using a real decision that someones friend has made to help spread your app, you are using actual social data that is relevant to the user. She also mention user generated content (UGC) in this step, USG is something I want to gomore into later in more detail, but basically one of the very real benefits to search marketers of apps are their ability to have users create both content and links. I will put more out on this later.

Three: Include more “Usage Groups”

Usage groups? A quick explanation of this is that it can be said that there are two “loops” to getting more users…

The Invite loop – Viral

The Usage loop – Organic

Viral is becoming a bad word in the gadget industry, not because of high and mighty thinking but because of user complaints. A social platform must satisfy it’s users and there is a general trand to end viral methods of spread. (forced invites, forced interaction, forced anything)

Useful applications are typically created with the goal of organic growth (usefulness to users) in mind, rather than the main goal of an app being it’s spread. 

Four: Use updates and notifications wisely

Vivian highlighted the importance of using social data within your updates to it’s fullest potential. The more relevant and and useful info you include in your updates and notifications the better off your app will be, and the more satisfied your users will become. An example would be to include a message a friend gave a user in the update instead of requiring a user to go to the app to read it.

Five: Respect the users privacy

This is a simple one. A clear and concise explanation of what info is being used and how, goes a long way. Use any user info wisely, with their interests in mind.

Next there was some look at code and the ways a Open Social app uses to spread…

1 – Passive – Activity Streams (updates, notification)

2 – More Direct – User Messaging

2 – Direct App Sharing – requestShareApp()

Okay, that’s it for this session and part two of Google I/O coverage.

SocialMedia.com had a session at Google I/O, a developer conference.

Think about that.

SocialMedia.com have an extraordinary amount of data. In fact I feel safe in saying that other than Facebook itself, there is no one who has more Facebook social interaction data than SocialMedia and Adonomics.

SocialMedia.com will now be offering advertising via Open Social platforms like MySpace, Hi5, and Bebo (AOL) in addition to Facebook.

They are in an great place already, and to be an early player in Open Social is going make them incredibly strong as far as data goes, and since they have an existing ad system in place, they can quickly take over social media ads.

Oh, and they were invited to do a session at Google I/O, a developer event.

Think about that. Hmmmm, here is a company poised to be in a powerful position both data-wise and advertising-wise. I’ve heard Google likes stuff like that.

There is no formal relationship between SocialMedia.com and Google. I am not saying that there is, in fact I asked them…

“Do you have a formal relationship with Google?”

“No” was their reply… but their eyes were all twinkly when they said it.

SocialMedia.com (an ad company) had a session at Google I/O, a developer conference.

I’ll stop repeating myself now. It just seemed odd to me.

Corrections: I received this from the creator of Adonomics, in my original post I incorrectly stated there was a relationship between SocialMedia.com and Adonomics. I was wrong. Ooops. Here is what I recieved…

First, I’m the creator of Adonomics. I sold it to a startup in
Monterey, though, and no longer work on it.

Second, Adonomics is in no way affiliated with SocialMedia, and
they’re certainly not the same company.

Third, in June of 2007 I created Appaholic (no ‘s’). Appsaholic (with
an ‘s’) was launched the same weekend.

After I sold Appaholic we changed the name to Adonomics. Appsaholic
was brought under the SocialMedia brand name as they shifted their
strategy towards advertising rather than analytics. Appsaholic was
originally only a Facebook app, while Appaholic/Adonomics was always a
destination site.

Adonomics is owned wholly by KallOut, Inc. and Appsaholic is owned
wholly by SocialMedia Networks, Inc. They are two different
companies.

Hope that clears things up

Jesse E.I. Farmer

That did clear things up

Thanks Jesse.

By some miracle I was awake when this conference began at 8AM (ouch), and I was impressed by the keynote. I am happy I made it to see it, I was thinking of skipping it.

Keynote Speech

The keynote, as I said was pretty good. In it, Google products were highlighted, but the real crowd pleaser was when Android (Google’s mobile phone solution) was used to show Street View and the compass feature was shown. This feature allows the phone user to move the phone around and have Google streetview follow it’s direction. So if you are looking South, the view in Google streetview is looking south as well, and if you turn around and face north, then the view in streetview will look North as well, real time following of the users direction made us geeks break out into spontaneous applause.

Open Social was highlighted as well, and hightlighted well. Some useage numbers were given…

Total reach: 275 Million

Amount of developers: 20,000

App installs 50 million

Impressive numbers for something that hasn’t really even been fully implemented yet

AOL announced that they will have a gadget platform, and that it will be Open Social compatible. This wasn’t too surprising since AOL has been aquiring gadgget platforms for a few months now

Open Social Containers

Here are some items from Open Social containers…

iGoogle-

The new iGoogle is Open Social ready and Kevin Tom of Google put out some info…

-iGoogle usage:  50% USA / 50% out of USA

-Negative comments about gadgets will affect ranking in directory

-The Themes API will be updated shortly

- Canvas views for Open Social gadgets will be live this month

-Full open social compatibility… “this summer”

-There is an iGoogle developer blog

Imeem-

-3rd largest social media site

- Imeem media platform Open Social compatible

- Developers have access to media content (very interesting)

MySpace-

- remote container acces to MySpace data coming soon

- Full text search browser side is live on their site mail (via Google Gears)

Orkut-

- 60 million active users

- “millions” of app installs

- Rollout of Open Social to all users coming soon

AOL-

- My Aol will begin offering gadgets

- Adopting O-Auth

Linkedin-

- will offer home, profile, and canvas views for Open Social Apps

- Average user household income of 140,000 per year

- Will offer monetization to app developers

Netlog-

- Huge European social site

- 35 Million members

-4 billion pageviews a month

- will whitelist apps

- Offers help with localization/ language issues

- Monetization availible via charging “credits” and developer will recieve 65%

Ning-

- Adopting Shindig

- impressive numbers as far as users / social networks go

Google FriendConnect-

- Oauth and Open ID, and Open Social compatible

Yahoo -

-180 billion pageviews a month

- Social apps will be able to query yahoo social data

- Updates and presence data will be made availible (as in.. what a user is doing right now)

- will have canvas view

Here are the slides from the “Meet the containers” Open Social session…

| View | Upload your own

That’s it for now, I will put out more about other sessions soon…