Business these days need to allow customers to personalise the services they desire. Similiar trends have taken off with websites that opened up their platform to allow businesses and developers to be creative on how they utilise the platform. Here are some of the platforms the help you expand you online presence.
Widget distribution platform
Widgets have gained popularity as they could live on either a desktop, or websites. Popular desktop widget engines are
- Apple dashboard
- Windows gadget
- Google desktop widget
- Yahoo widget
If your organisation have a strategy to distribute mini tools on to your client’s desktops, there are services that help you achieve this.
WidgetBox (http://www.widgetbox.com/)
WidgetBox allows you to create your own widget from scratch using either
- JS/html
- Flash
- Remote url
- Google gadget xml
or using a list of pre-created widgets source from blog, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube … etc
SpringWidget (http://www.springwidgets.com/)
SpringWidget provides a SDK and a set of API to allow organisations/developers to create widgets of their own. The company also provides a platform to allow organisations/developers to publish their creation on the platform.
ClearSpring (http://www.clearspring.com/)
ClearSpring is very similiar to WidgetBox, once you sign up to their platform, you are able to use their APIs to create your own widget and distribute them. It provides a platform to distribute widget to by using the new AddThis platform that they have.
Personalised/Customised Homepage
iGoogle is the most popular portal style homepage that allows users to pick and choose what they want to display on their homepage.
There were a few that sprung up with similiar features, with additional capability to allow business/organisation to create a pre-defined page.
Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com)
Netvibes is exactly like iGoogle which allows user to customise their own page with pre-created widgets. However it allows users to publish a customised page/tab and allow other users to “paste” the customise page/tab on their own ones. I have created one for KoLe Enterprise Consulting here with similiar theme, and show what additional information that I am reading.
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com)
Facebook is the famous social networking site, however, not many organisations have taken advantage of promoting on the Facebook. Organisations could create their own Fan Page, and it can be a very powerful PR tool once they have accumulate enough fans. It allows business to announce news/promotions, create discussions and it encourages their clients to participate and distribute the “news” to their family and friends. Here is KoLe Enterprise Consulting’s fan page.
Conclusions
To conclude, there are various way out there to improve your online precense, through either widgets or social media platforms. Hitwise recently announced that Facebook has overtook Google to become the most visit website in USA last month1. Understanding your organisation’s image and your customer’s behaviours are the key to define a successful viral distribution/marketing strategy.
Reference
1. Hitwise says Facebook Most Popular U.S. Site. TechCrunch. [http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/15/hitwise-says-facebook-most-popular-u-s-site/]
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