Monday, September 3, 2007

Web : The Way I want it !

It's been some time that I came across creating totally customized web pages for yourself ( the likes of igoogle ) but never found a fancy for any ! The idea of getting only the information that I want ( and nothing more ) along with some cool widgets always fascinated me but somehow I couldn't stick for more than 2-3 days on any of these even after spending some valuable time customizing the feeds and widgets.

It was only recently that one of my "more" tech savvy friend - Satish, introduced me to Net Vibes. Trust me, it has made my quest for relevant information easier. I loved the simplicity of presentation & the fact that you can customize the site to the minutest possible detail - they haven't even put their logo on your customized page ! Now, I no longer have to hop from site to site looking for information that I want rather than the information that I am shown.

But, if such will be the form of the websites users will like to visit ( or rather create for themselves ) in future then what will the form of online advertising they will consume? As a consumer I would love to get Hot Deals on my favorite brands as RSS feeds within this page (remember Google's mantra to success was to treat advertising as a commercial information which consumers are looking for ) or put up a cool widget like LIVE Cricket or Tennis Scores on my customized web page - Both give a very good advertising or branding opportunity !



I also see a huge potential in the way advertisers are integrating applications in "Facebook" - Flixster's Movie Rating Application or Trip Advisor's Travel Map Application - to me that's the perfect way of riding on the social media wave as treating social networking sites like just another "eyeball" play is not the smartest thing to do. You need to be a part of them to get noticed and thus make a difference to the community at large!

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