Date published: 01.09.08 - not release date

Widgety Goodness 2007 - Europe’s first Widget Conference

Google, plus top agencies to speak on commercial development and opportunities as the web becomes widgetised

On 6th December 2007 Brighton will be host to the 1st ever European Widget Conference. Featuring speakers from major agencies, social networks, widget platforms and media groups, the one day conference will look at the widgetization of content for social networks and its implications for marketers.

Big brands are recognising the huge potential of widgets to deliver their marketing messages and allow consumers to customise their own web experience. Widgety Goodness will aim to answer some of the key questions about widgets and help marketing professionals in brand, media and advertising understand how to harness one of the main online developments of the last year. With the explosive growth of social networking, blogging and personal start pages in 2007 set to continue, understanding widgets is now crucial.

There are a range of speakers from around the world to provide insight into widget creation, delivery, analytics and SEO. Key players such as Google’s Business Product Manager, Christian Oestlien, are expected to speak along with blogger extraordinaire Russell Davies. The conference will focus on widget tools and platforms, and commercial applications with real world case studies and panel discussion regarding social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

Christian Oestlien, from Google, sees its AdSense network as more than a place to run text-link advertising. With relationships with tens of 1000's of small Web publishers, Google sees an opportunity for AdSense to become a new version of the portal, able to re-aggregate audiences whose attentions are fragmented across many online destinations. “We think it addresses this whole notion of audience fragmentation that’s happening on the Web,” said Oestlien. “A lot of our video partners are living in a world where their audience is spread out across 1000's of Web sites.”

In order to step beyond the confines of the conference itself and to facilitate the ‘conference as social network’, every delegate will get access to a unique moderated conference social network, Backnetwork, in order to make connections, share information and discuss ideas as things happen in this fast-moving space.

Commenting on the conference, Widgety Goodness organiser and founder of Snipperoo Ivan Pope said: “Widgetization and fragmentation raise issues that go to the heart of brand control, but offers an incredibly powerful tool to those who can work with rather than against the process. Startups such as RockYou are now seeing 100's of millions of widget views per week right across the spectrum from blogs to MySpace to personal start pages such as iGoogle. The entry of Google itself into the space with the Google Gadget Ads product promises the opening up of managed channels into the social networks.”

He continued: “Successful widgets are viral in nature and are voluntarily taken and embedded in the host website. Widgetization means the breaking up of monolithic content into small packages that find their own destinations. It puts control into the hands of consumers with decisions about what content sits where becoming driven by the intelligence of the end user, not by a remote editor.”

Ten Reasons Why Widgety Goodnes is going to be a Key Event for 2007:

1.Widgets are the must have for all web applications
2.Widgets can go places that other things can’t
3.The web is fragmenting
4.Widgets put power back in the hands of the Users (as in User Generated Content)
5.Widgety Goodness brings together two industries for the 1st time
6.Every social network will have a ‘platform’ for widgets by the end of 2008
7.Google has entered the space big time, to be followed by everyone else
8.Several billion widgets are served every day
9.Revenue is following distribution into the widgetsphere
10.Many new widget applications will launch in 2008

- Ends -

Notes to editors:

For further info visit the Widgety Goodness siteor check out Ivan Pope's blog.

Current speaker list:

•Raj Anand, founder & Chief Executive Officer, Kwiqq
•Simon Andrews, CSO, Worldwide Mindshare Interaction
•Jon Baines, Chief Executive Officer, Lateral
•Alex Bard, founder & Chief Executive Officer, goowy media and Yourminis
•Anil Batra, Zerodash1 and Webanalysis
•Steve Bowbrick, Head of Digital, KMI
•Fergus Burns, founder & Chief Executive Officer, Nooked
•Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK
•Russell Davies, OpenIntelligenceAgency
•Eli Eliezerov, CMO & Co-founder Gigya
•Tariq Krim, founder Netvibes
•Khris Loux, Chief Executive Officer js-kit
•Christian Oestlien, Business Product Manager at Google
•Ivan Pope, founder and Chief Executive Officer Snipperoo
•Emmanuel Prat, founder Widget Avenue
•Hooman Radfar, founder and Chief Executive Officer Clearspring
•Ori Soen, Chief Executive Officer Musestorm
•Don Synstelien, Springwidgets

Sponsors to date include:

•Youminis
•Musestorm
•Widget Avenue
•New Media Age
•Netimperative
•Mashup*event
•Backnetwork

For the full schedule to date please visit: http://widgetygoodness.com/schedule/

Press Contact:

For press enquiries on Widgety Goodness or if you would like to speak to Ivan Pope AKA Mr Widget, contact:

Zoe Porteous / Kristina Tutlewski
Boutique Communications
Tel: +44 (0) 1273 620194
enquiries@boutiquecommunications.com