For the makers of widgets, those annoy-your-friends applications littering social networks, it's fractions of pennies from heaven: AOL ad network Platform-A has promised Facebook and Bebo widget developers that it can guarantee them "one of the industry’s highest" CPM — cost per thousand pageviews — rates if they…
Blake Commagere created the all the widgets you hate most on Facebook — the Zombies, Werewolves, Vampires and Slayers. The ones that spam you with bites and inspired knockoffs like Pirates and Ninjas that everyone also hates. You'd think Blake would hide from publicity given his monstrous creations, but no, today we…
Until last night, Top Friends by Slide was Facebook's third most popular widget, judging by daily active users and installations. Today, Top Friends is no longer on Facebook at all. News.com says its because pesky Canadian Byron Ng discovered a security loophole in the widget that allowed any user with Top Friends…
In China there's a popular consumer practice called tuangou or "team-buying," in which a large group of like-minded shoppers meet online and organize a trip to a local store. On that decided-upon day, they all show up in a huge pack and offer to buy, say, 75 digitial cameras from the store owner, but only if he'll…
Ad network for widgetmakers SocialMedia plans to serve ads in Facebook widgets and possibly across the Internet that use pictures of the ad-viewers' Facebook friends. Called "social banners," the service can only display a Facebook user's picture if that user already added a widget made by one of SocialMedia's…
Facebook has removed the "Wall" from its redesigned profiles. Early screenshots of the redesign featured a separate tab for the popular feature, but the latest shots show the Wall, where other users can leave comments on a profile, with the user's News Feed — now just called the "Feed." Users will be able to filter…
So. The bad Countrywide-related guy who just 'resigned' from the Obama campaign? He was at the Bilderberg conference, that fun meeting of the secret shadow government. And he's connected to sooo many other organizations that plot the global food crisis and control the churches, like the Brookings Institute and the…
Ian Schafer, CEO of marketing agency Deep Focus, got to play around with a redesigned version of his Facebook profile and has this bad news for social media marketers to report:
Despite the rumors, we all know widgetmaker RockYou isn't really worth $400 million. Not with the way ad buyers feel about spending on social media. We hear RockYou's latest investor, Doll Capital Management — which funded the company with another $35 million today — didn't value the company at $400 million either.…
Slide VP Keith Rabois says the widgetmaker is done making widgets — at least for Facebook. Rabois told SIlicon Alley Insider that Slide wants to focus on improving its existing apps, like SuperPoke and Top Friends. The company also knows it needs to start figuring out how to make enough money to justify its $550…
Widgetmaker RockYou raised $35 million from venture firm Doll Capital Management and private investors. Rumor has the deal setting RockYou's value near $400 million. RockYou created Facebook widgets SuperWall, Vampires, Likeness, X Me and claims 87.5 million visitors a month and 2.7 billion pageviews. Paying…
Linking up social websites, as proponents of "data portability" would have us do, can be hazardous to your privacy. And Paris Hilton's, and Lindsay Lohan's. But even the widgets on a single social network can leave us exposed. SuperPoke, a popular application made by Slide, will show you who's thrown a sheep at…
Welcome to the Silicon Valley hype cycle: One year, and you're over. That seems to be the consensus on Facebook's vaunted platform, whose one-year anniversary went largely unremarked. The company itself didn't blog about it until today, and sources tell us an open-bar party Facebook held in Palo Alto was low-key to…
Widget ad network Clearspring raised another $18 million in a third round of funding. New Enterprise Associates led the way and previous backers including Novack Biddle Venture Partners joined in, too. Is the so-called "widget economy" really so big that Clearsping, RockYou, and Slide are worth the $118 million…
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded states again last night, but Obama is only a handful of delegates away from securing the Democratic Party's nomination. The latest Web metric — widgets embedded on social-network pages — puts him firmly in the lead against John McCain. If only widgets counted as much as having…
Little-known MySpace "cofounder" Kyle Brinkman announced new rules for application developers on the social network's platform today. They're meant to prevent the spam bubble Facebook went through after it launched its platform last year. In response, Facebook tightened up its rules, and offended developers in the…
Kongregate, a sort of YouTube for Flash games backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as well as Greylock Partners, will adapt some of its 4,500 games to Facebook's platform this week, Kongregate CEO Jim Greer told Inside Social Games. Kongregate makes money, or tries to, through advertising it shares with third-party…
This decade's greatest Internet hits — Google and PayPal — make so much money because they help money change hands more efficiently. The next great wave of moneymakers on the Web won't be nearly so utilitarian, Keith Rabois, VP at widgetmaker Slide, argues in a guest post to AllThingsD. Rabois says the Web's next…
Due to a souring economy and a shift in spending from Facebook itself to third-party developers who place widgets on the social network's site, market research firm eMarketer lowered its projections for Facebook's 2008 ad revenue from $305 million to $265 million. eMarketer expects ad spending on widgets and…
