While Socialize has actually been around since September, its relevancy seems pretty significant now with the launches of the services mentioned above.

What Exactly is Socialize?

The official description: Gigya Socialize is a service that allows your users to connect with their Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking friends on your site. Through the single Socialize API, your site can tap into the APIs enabled by multiple social networks. For example, you can publish actions into the Facebook Newsfeed and let your users share through the Facebook notification system. On your own site, you can also display users’ MySpace or Facebook friends and allow your users to interact with them. Gigya Socialize is designed to protect users’ privacy while giving site owners all the information and control they need to make their sites social.

I conducted something of a Q&A with Gigya’s VP of Marketing, Liza Hausman. The results of that follow.

Chris Crum: How do you plan to compete with the larger brands like Google, Facebook, and MySpace who have all launched similar products recently?

Liza Hausman: Gigya Socialize enables websites to tap into both Facebook and OpenSocial platforms, integrating their site experience with multiple social networks. With Socialize, websites can enable their users to connect with existing social network friends no matter which social network they use. With Gigya Socialize, companies do not have to be limited to either choosing a single service, or having to maintain connections to multiple services on their own.  Gigya manages the backend APIs across Facebook and OpenSocial platforms, monitoring for changes 24/7, and will add social networks as they make their APIs available. This allows websites to focus on what they do best, creating great user experiences.

CC: What kind of marketing tactics are you using to promote it (aside from press releases obviously)?

LH: Gigya has a business development team focused on outreach to specific web properties that could benefit from using the service. We drive relevant traffic to our website where we make the full APIs available with free registration. Gigya utilizes Twitter, follow us at: http://twitter.com/Gigya. We also promote Socialize through media outreach to journalists and analysts who cover the space.

CC: What kind of user base have you established so far?

LH: Socialize is currently implemented on FoxSearchlight.com and Coca-cola.com and will soon launch on several Hearst properties. Electronic Arts is working on an implementation for their Sims franchise online. Hundreds of smaller web properties have also implemented the Socialize service. We expect to announce additional major media companies, etailers, and other large web properties early next year.

CC: What is the company’s model for monetizing?

LH: At this point we are focusing on building the user base, but will ultimately be developing an advertising revenue model for monetization.

And there you have it. The big well-known brands aren’t the only ones offering these kind of services, and based on the clients Gigya already has under its belt, it is a brand that we might see on the rise in the near future.

Moderator: Bill Flitter, VP, Marketing, Founder, Pheedo

• Steven Marder, CEO, Eurekster
• Ben Pashman, VP Business Development, Gigya

Bill Flitter

RSS, new media, blogging, social media. That’s what Pheedo does. We help publishers analyze and use dist content. Thinking re: results

round and round widgets—’widgets’ used to be a generic term, but now it has a meaning

Brainstorming what we, the audience, want to know—we design the session.

• What makes a great widget? What makes people want it?
• What are popular widgets today?
• Is the microsite dead?
• Why do I need widgets?
• Is it worth creating these? Can we monetize widgets (specifically Facebook)?
• Examples of bad widgets—best practices
• How can widgets impact search?
• Can you measure conversions on widgets?
• Challenges in production?
• Legal concerns of widgets

Ben Pashman

Simple to complex widgets

Why is there so much attention focused on widgets? Social network advertising will grow a lot. Doesn’t interrupt user experience, not forcefeeding a branded message while they’re trying to talk to their friends. It’s the answer to how to get social media advertising

“If social network marketing delivers on its promise of peer recommendations the flow of ad dollars will turn into a flood”—eMarketer

The definition of widgets: widgets are miniapps that can be deployed on top of existing communities like Facebook. His simpler definition: any little piece of content that can be grabbed and shared, goes from one place to another—the atomized web. Even YouTube, embedding video. Shared, grabbed, personalized, utilized.

3 types of widgets

• desktop
• start page
• social media (the narrower definition)—big opportunity here. Dave Berkowitz broke down differences between these types of widgets in his blog. Goals: entertain friends, identify themselves, engage people, have fun, enable communications. Sets it apart from other categories.

It’s all just starting—we’re in the ca. 1995 era here. We’re seeing a lot of viral players, repackaging of content, and that works to some extent, but it doesn’t leverage the full potential.

Nike—what could they do?

Personal: Johnny, 16 y/o, likes movies and bball. Nike offers widget customizable to fave athlete/team. Highlight footage in widgets, send customized messages, live chats

Widget analytics:

• installs by location
• impressions
• interactions
• lifecycle (how long is it living on the page/pageviews over time)
• viral distribution patters

You can think of a widget as a mini browser. It’s a 24 hour TV channel that you can put anything in any time.

It’s primarily branding tool. Can drive some traffic to site, but primarily provides exposure for your site away from you site. Provides user-endorsed exposure. Can be viral. If your brand can be part of an individual’s self-expression, that’s a lofty goal.

Steven Marder

What’s great about widgets is the distribution opportunity. We’re about branded, distributed, social search. It’s about brands, distribution, engaging consumers with widgets. Leveraging search as a behavior, users’ desire/comfort with search while they’re on your page. We’ve been around 3+ years. But we’re not about building a destination or attract consumers—working with publishers.

Search + wiki = swickis

Trends in social media/social search

Then: media 1.0 centralized creation, traditional distribution, one-to-many. Search 1.0 algorithmic organization & creation (increasing dissatisfaction of generic search) one-to-many.

Now: media 2.0: navigation and discovery through connection and engagement. Discovery is just a huge element here, huge value prop for widgets and social media in general. Many-to-many

It’s about understanding your consumer, reinforcing brand, driving action. Leveraging social media tools, being part of the conversation, being authentic, being transparent. How do you engage in a conversation? Being fun, useful, authoritative, providing links to other people, providing value.

What do you have that you can leverage?

The power of your brand, the power of community, user participation and engagement, social media tools. Provide useful tools, apps, etc. to let them interact with your brand (content, products, genre). Leveraging social search is one such tactic.

We think social search is the next phase, and Google gets that—personalization to influence SERPs. It’s all about search behavior off general destinations.

Ex: search box with tag cloud widget. It’s a search tool for the site, but also a discovery tool.

Demo of building widget with Eurekster. Now you can build a site-specific search, brand it, skin it, and let people put it on their sites.

Steven: Fantastic opportunity to get in with kids early.

Q&A

Are there affiliate type widgets?

Ben: There are some available—Amazon, eBay, Widget Bucks. Natural extension for sure.

Steven: Be authentic. Build your brand.

Comment: Dell just did a campaign where people could contribute to a campaign to let people contribute to help their friends buy new computers—via widget and Paypal.

Biggest take home tip?

Ben: Keep it simple. Don’t try to cram your whole website on there.

Steven: Get compelling, engaging content on that widget.

Ben: Think about how can you add to the experience of the target display website. Fun, simple, silly are doing great volume.

Ben: Clearly the microsite is dead. Why would someone want to go to the BourneIdentity.com when they could take it with them? Don’t work so hard on creating a site to then create a community—leverage an existing community.

I built a Google Gadget. It got clicks but no sales. Can I reuse it? What do I do?

Ben: That’s a very common experience. You can’t just “build it and they will come.” Distribute it, promote it, but it’s not an easy thing. You can’t just build it and drop it in a widget gallery. (Though that can happen.)

[Note from my discussion with Tameka Kee of MediaPost: Think about why your target audience would want that widget on their site, not what you want to push out onto them.]

Steven: It’s not just a marketing tool. It’s softer. It’s branding.

Ben: It’s not just repurposing an ad.

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