Internet Trends 2008

Morgan Stanley has made available their Internet Trends report for 2008. The 72 page report covers:
1) Usage Patterns
2) Social Networking
3) Widgetization
4) Measureability
5) Monetization
6) Facebook Apps
7) Online Ad Spend
8) Online Video
9) Mobile Outlook
10) Emerging Trends
11) Recession Impact

Click to view report on Internet Trends

MySpace Announces Launch of Developer Platform

As read on TechCrunch yesterday morning,

MySpace is finally getting ready to pull the trigger on its long-awaited platform for developers. Starting today, programmers can sign up to register for the MySpace API program, which will go live on February 5th. The APIs will allow developers to create social applications for MySpace much like they can already for Facebook. The platform will be compatible with Google’s OpenSocial platform, meaning that applications written for OpenSocial will work on MySpace with a few minimal tweaks.



More details will come out later about what exactly the APIs will allow developers to do, but at a high level they will allow for deeper integration into MySpace than can currently be done with Flash widgets. The APIs we believe will support Flash, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets, and give developers deeper access to MySpace member profile information and their connections. Developers also will be able to make money from advertising associated with their applications.

What it means: with all the talks about Facebook in the last 6 months, we tend to forget MySpace is still a major force in the social networking world. According to this recent eMarketer article, "The site received 72% of US visits to social networks in December 2007 alone" with Facebook a distant second at 16.03%. In terms of reach, MySpace had close to 72M unique visitors in October 2007 (source: eMarketer quoting ComScore) giving the site 40% reach of the US online market (Facebook is at 18%). In November, Compete data showed that only 20% of MySpace members were also on Facebook. So, if you're interested in reaching these 72M users, get in line to get a developer access.

Netvibes Ginger Beta Announced

I recently met Tariq Krim, Netvibes Founder and CEO. The company has just come out with the next gen of their personalized homepage Netvibes Ginger. This is a private beta release of the service; general availability for all users is expected in mid-Feb.

As described on the site, with the beta, users can "create and personalize a netvibes Universe page just for yourself or publish one for your friends, family, everyone! A Universe is your very own personal dashboard that's updated live directly from all your favorite Web services (email, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, widgets) and media content (blogs, podcasts, video). Everything you enjoy on the Web, available at a glance, all in one place — spend less time surfing and logging in from site to site and more time enjoying your web, your way."

Portability of Applications and Widgets

Talk about portable widgets is not new. After all, 2007 has been proclaimed "Year of the Widget" by Newsweek. Though what I intend to discuss here is more about portability aspects and efforts in this direction rather than about widgets themselves. One of the early entrants in the market was Knofabulator (remember anyone?) which was bought by Yahoo. Then it seemed that they didn't know what to do with it and rebranded it but added no extra functionalities. A few days back it was in the news that Yahoo was releasing version 4.5 of its Konfabulator widget. The new version includes things like HTML and Flash support as well as a better user interface. However, Yahoo widgets are still only for desktops like Vista or XP. However, with Google releasing widgets for Mac a few days back, as well as Mac having widget support and Microsoft supporting widgets in Vista, Yahoo may find itself facing tough competition in a comparatively small market. Such widgets are important if we see them in the light of what is expected of applications in future. Application virtualization is gaining ground and also to be noted is the following vision of Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt.

Netvibes is a company which had initially announced a widget platform to make widgets that can work on Vista, Google, Mac, and even Yahoo widgets. It is called Universal Widget API and has the aim of "build your module once, deploy everywhere". Other companies in this space are Musestorm and Clearspring. Musestorm enables non-programmers to develop rich media widgets and Clearspring specializes in distributing widgets as well as analytics and API. The next step, of course, would be for these applications or widgets to run on mobile as well. For instance, I am sure Google's Android which is to be released next year with Open Handset Alliance will soon be integrated with their Web ToolKit so that applications can run over mobile, computer, and web. And won't that be cool?

Popular Apps on Social Networks

The Web Is Better When It's Social

Maka maka. It's official! Google's platform agnostic API OpenSocial is live. Per its Product Managers:

"OpenSocial is a set of common APIs that will work on many different social websites, including MySpace, Hi5, Ning, orkut, and LinkedIn, among others. In addition, this allows developers to learn one API, then write a social application for any of those sites. Learn once, write anywhere, if you will. And because it's built on web standards like HTML and JavaScript, developers don't have to learn a custom programming language." (like Facebook's proprietary ftml maybe?!)

"Perhaps most interestingly, we will see social capabilities move into new contexts. OpenSocial will also work in non-traditional social contexts, such as on Salesforce.com and Oracle. With a common set of APIs, it will be even easier to extend social functionality. Beyond the many fun and entertaining social applications we already have seen, we think we'll see a number of social applications emerge in business contexts."

The business applications and adaptations of this should very interesting.

Google Gadgetizing the Web

Google Gadgets was the topic of discussion for Jeff Huber, VP of Engineering, at Google in a presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit. Jeff explained that gadgets are representative of the programmable web. Gadgets are being created using rss, html, flash, and css and that gadgets are open, easy, mashable, packable, portable, and embeddable. He went on to say that gadgets serve to disaggregate the web and are socially distributed.

There are 20,000 gadgets on over 100,000 sites and a billion are served each week via syndication. There are also gadgets being embedded in gadgets eg. Google Maps. According to Huber, "what rss did for content, gadgets are doing for apps. It is the power of the open platform and open distribution system that is responsible for growing gadgets versus as a company trying to do this. It is an open ecosystem that is democratic and self-sustaining. The platform is fast, open, and easy. The web is the platform."

HP Unlocks the Printable Web for Millions of Internet Users

HP has just announced that it will be making it easy for you to print your customized content from the web. This is part of HP's Print 2.0 Strategy to offer internet users new and enhanced printing options to control what they print and how they print it. HP has partnered with high traffic sites like Facebook, Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, and Disney.com to offer this improved print capability. HP plans to deliver this via Web 2.0 technologies such as those developed through an acquisition of web-based app, Tabblo, and others.

"People are frustrated with printing from the web – it’s often wasteful and rarely do the pages print with the information laid out on the page the way you want," said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president, Imaging and Printing Group, HP.

On Facebook, users can use a Graffiti widget to draw on or decorate their own and friend's profiles and print their real-world artwork. With Flickr, it's a similar feature. The HP technology will power a blog printing feature on Microsoft Live Spaces.

Designing for Speed

Speed is everything. Especially in the ultra competitive, information rich web environment where users are overloaded and are willing to allocate only so much time to your site. So, design for speedy websites. Speed of download of pages, speed of access to information, speed of execution of commerce, etc.. Speed speed speed! If you've got a high traffic or an e-commerce site, speed is especially important. So, notwithstanding Marion Jones' steroids, here are 10 tips to help your sites load like they're on steroids.

1. Keep it simple
In many ways, Google has mastered this...speed of execution in their business as well as sites. Lets face it, the Classic Google homepage in all its bareness is the Mario Andretti of the web. Fast and furious. Its easy to over-complicate things and get carried away with too many bells and whistles. An analogy I like to use with my designers, male and female alike, is the 'less is more' fashion analogy where you remove one accessory item before you leave the house. This can be applied to sites as well.

2. Optimize your code
Aim for a page size of 50-70KB including a full load of all code, images, and apps. There are several tools online that can help you calculate the size of your pages. High speed internet connections are commonplace today but depending on your target audience and their access point, be it dial-up hotel room access, T1-3 office connection, or mobile access, you will know their likely connection speed and can determine how long it takes to load a page.

3. Optimize your rich media files
Rich media files like Flash, video, images, etc., although key, can be death to page load if used incorrectly. Over-accessorizing a page with gratuitous images, for example, can be noisy as well as add unnecessary bytes to a page. Try preloading files so they are cached and load faster. It always kills me when I see these so-called design agencies with their all flash sites. Not only does that date them, it is clunky.

4. Minimize use of tables
Table based designs and too many nested tables add code to a page. Try using more CSS to layout your pages instead and use divs instead of tables where possible.

5. Use server side includes
Once SSI files like .asp and .php includes are called from the server, they are cached and, therefore, load faster on subsequent requests. SSIs also have the added benefit of facilitating easier and faster site updates.

6. Do use Ajax
Loading new pages slows you down especially if your page sizes are not up to snuff. Decrease calls to the server for page requests by using nifty web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax. Ajax uses javscripting which is client side scripting. Gmail and Google Maps are popular examples of Ajax implementations. Be sure to keep your js files external as they are cached by the browser. Too many scripts, however, and positioning in the context of the code (top or bottom) impact page loading performance.

7. Use Web 2.0 widgets/badges/gadgets wisely
Certain widgets have been known to slow down page loads. Flash widgets are expecially prone to this as are image serving widgets. Test them out before loading up.

8. Test test test
Do the old heuristic evaluation. Get out your stop watch, clear your cache, and type your website address into the address field of your browser and see how long it takes. Try it a few times and at different times of the day. For peak times when there are more people trying to access your site, load time is especially important. Depending on the purpose of your site, target audience, and who you ask, aim for a 3-5 second load time. Again, there are online tools for timing your site load.

9. Get fast servers
Make sure you have fast, dedicated servers. No need to expound on this hopefully.

10. Other
Here are some other guidelines from Yahoo as well: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html.

Google Adsense & Ad Widget Alternatives Explode

Online advertising is one sure way to monetize traffic on a web site as Google has proven with AdWords and AdSense. Adsense being the most successful "widget" ever. Over the last few months many companies have sprung in every vertical to capitalize on ad dollars moving online. The

Besides Google, there are alternatives such as Yahoo Publisher, Microsoft adCenter and even Nokia has ambitions of challenging Google via the purchase of Enpocket.

Start-ups like Tumri, Widgetbucks, Proximic and many others have rolled out products that compete with AdSense in defined verticals, thus claiming better targeting and potentially more revenue. These products allow bloggers and web site publishers to customize the kinds of items they want to appear in the widget (books, movies, computers, musical instruments). Others offer contextually dynamic ad widget that web site publishers can include on their web site for added value to readers and themselves.

A side from technical differentiation on how ads are matched and served. Do these alternatives help to better monetize your web traffic? For example WidgetBucks promises the equivalent of $3-$6 CPMs (cost per thousand views) versus the industry average of $2 CPMs.

Most of these widgets providers aggregate inventory via APIs from the likes of Amazon, Shopping.com, Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Gap to name a few. If you publisher a web site in a narrow vertical you can easily integrate the feeds into your web site and keep all of the revenue as instead of splitting it with a widget provider.

However, if you have multiple data feeds from multiple providers it might require more integration, as well as staying on top of all the code updates and adminstrative requirements like collecting checks from multiple providers. Here is where the third party widget providers add value. Essentially for a revenue split they undertake the technical and administrative components on your behalf. Also, because they have volume that can negotiate better terms with the data providers. Eg. I do not know anyone who has received a check from Amazon.

All that said you are limited to the diversity and quality of the ad inventory that the third party widget provider. If your web site caters to a very narrow this could be a problem. That is where Google Adsense makes sense because Google has the depth and breath in inventory but the payout maybe less.

It might might make sense to have several providers or different providers on different pages. Some providers consider it a violation of their terms of service to have their ad widget run concurrent to other ad widgets. So if you publish a web site, it would make sense to examine all the different alternatives and choose what is best for your web site.

Advertising 2.0: It’s Raining Widgets!

Google launched widget ads – this mashup of a widget with a traditional banner ad creates exciting possibilities. There are a few examples here – I particularly like the movie ad – ‘A Mighty Heart’ and the Honda ad.

I like these two for a few reasons:

• It’s basically a shrunken micro site – it serves as a great source of information. But also (probably because of the size limitations) is meant to present only the most important/relevant information, which is really all most of us want anyways.
• If created properly the content provided may serve as a source of information that may be of interest to special interest groups, partners and hopefully customers. If the right information is put into the ad people will want to post it to their sites and why not let them? Google even thought of that and included an ‘embed this ad’ script (as shown here).
• It’s interactive –they even have video components! Unlike a “pass through” ad, these ads combine the best elements of full web-apps with the portability and size of the traditional Google ad. Videos, forms, games, all possibilities creating an interactive experience for the user.

What would you put in your ad? I think it would be cool to show a 3D model or interactive diagram in there. Or if I were promoting an event it would be nice to embed the registration page in the widget itself.

Needless to say, this opens the door for a new use of the traditional Google Ad budget. The early question is whether this will be part of our existing Google Ad campaign or require a new strategy with a totally new campaign. Either way, I’m sure it means more marketing.