In-Brief: Nokia isn’t the only one that senses a business opportunity in ad-enabled widgets; Guillaume Decugis, a serial entrepreneur and renowned name in the mobile content space, introduces his new venture, Goojet, and his ambitions to create a sort of iTunes for widgets. The widgets would be ad-enabled and provide users a gateway to scores of services and apps, ranging from presence-aware communications to interactive maps. Mobile social networking, viral sharing, mobile search, recommendation, premium widget offers, and a business ecosystem that would promote Goojet widget partners round out the offer. Considering that Goojet recently made the Red Herring Top 100 Europe and that Guillaume is perhaps best known as the brains behind Musiwave, the break-through music and content delivery platform Microsoft snapped up last year, Goojet will no doubt have an impact.

In preparation for yet another contribution to Mobile Media, an Informa Telecoms & Media mobile intelligence publication slated to appear next week, I have turned my attention to a new piece of mobile real estate I’m convinced will super-charge mobile advertising efforts and schemes: The widget. Nokia has quietly made its bid for a leadership position in this space, one that it may well claim when high-profile brands go public with their mobile advertising campaigns.

But Nokia, as I said, has company. Goojet has quietly and carefully put together its own approach that goes far beyond mobile advertising to deliver users a virtual mobile content/apps superstore with a long list of attractive - and potentially lucrative - extras. There’s a place for advertisers, an opportunity for partners, and even a spot for Google.

Goojet - which refers to good widget - is currently in a private beta, but look for it to break onto the scene soon. It’s a complex concept to explain, so my thanks again to Guillaume for walking me through it from end to end, and for providing MSG the cool slideshow below.

What is Goojet?

It’s going to be promoted as a super- user-friendly way user can get content and apps on their mobile. In fact, Guillaume tells me the word “widget” won’t even appear in the marketing. The focus will be entirely on “fixing what’s wrong with the mobile Internet and that is first and foremost that few people use it.” This is partly to blame on high data charges, but Goojet has bet the farm the real reason is the “lack of compelling and easy things for people to actually do with it [the mobile Internet].”

SPECS: The widgets are Java apps and the gateway to Goojet is also a Java app. “It’s exactly the same on the PC as it is on the phone, and it enables your phone to access the widget catalogue and all the functionalities of Goojet.” Users can forward the Goojet by SMS to friends and it is delivered a link to click, for example. In a nutshell, users can click a Goojet to send an SMS (messaging is more or less built-in to the Goojet, another way to tap the social graph) or they can also choose to include the Goojet in the message to pass around. A final option: Users can access the messaging capability to invite a user into a Goojet app/service to join in a game, for example. Plenty of opportunities to build and refine a social graph essential to effective and viral advertising…

USERS: Users can create their own personalized space or their own page by assembling different widgets with the services they want to use. To do this they look through the widgets in the catalogue using their PC and then choose widgets for the PC or the mobile - or both. “Right now, they just pick what they want and then decide what they want to have with them all the time (on their mobile devices) and what remains on the PC.” It will soon be possible to do all this via mobile, but Goojet has its eye on the prize of convergence. “The benefit of being on PC and mobile is we can engage the consumer wherever they are. The idea is to crate a space that lets users do what they want - when where and how they want.”

ITUNES FOR WIDGETS?: Well, the analogy would be perfect - but Guillaume tells me there is one caveat. “We’re an agent for widgets where people can not only get some new widgets, but also share them with their friends and engage, communicate, and create a social network. You can’t do this with iTunes…So, imagine that iTunes was offering music for free and letting people share and blog and comment about music; then I think you would have the right analogy.”

SHARING: Enabling users to pass cool widgets (and the advertising contained within!) to their friends sits at the core of what Goojet is about. “Sharing and communication is what got the Internet going. You could send a link to a friend or pass on a piece of cool content via email. Not being able to this on mobile stunts the growth of the mobile Internet.” To this end, Goojet will make it possible for users to share widgets and “use them in a collaborative manner” to enhance the exchange.

BUSINESS MODEL: Goojets start out free - period. “The money is going to be coming from a second phase we’re introducing: Premium widgets that will quite simply deliver users a premium experience.” That could be any number of perks/advantages including buying content, making calls or sending SMS. But the key focus in both scenarios is advertising. “With this widget concept we can create a new form of advertising and we think that’s really in the power of what we’re doing and what we’re bringing to market.” Put another way, Goojet’s goal is to combine all the benefits of the social network (they have a view into the social graph because they have encouraged users to share the widgets in the first place) with the benefits of widgets to create a brand experience that permeates all aspects of the user’s personal mobility experience.

ADVERTISING: Mobile advertising will be inserted into the widgets, but Guillaume reckons new forms of advertising will also emerge. Because widgets can be services, RSS feeds, games, and even brand messages, the way is clear for interactive advertising.

PERSONALIZATION: There is a profiling aspect to the service that will enable Goojet to leverage what they know about a user’s choice in widgets and the clues to the social graph to segment users and suggest additional widgets accordingly. An advertising model fits on top of that to close the feedback loop. The profiling will also power content recommendations. No word yet if Goojet will create its own recommendation engine or partner with a company for this capability…

OPENNESS: The aim is to be “totally open” and allow anyone to post a widget and promote it to their audience. However, Goojet will also pursue partnerships with companies that “goes beyond that.” As Guillaume puts it: “We’re going to have some partnership deals where we are also going to help the company create and promote the widget in return for the promotion and traffic they can bring to us.” So, how would this work in practice? Take maps. Would a partnership with Google for maps block the way for other providers? “No, it will be totally open and we would not prevent another map company from offering a widget on our site.” The only hurdle might be getting user attention (since a partnership does entitle the partner to some top placement), but no one is excluded (another huge difference to any Apple analogy…)

BUSINESS FOCUS: But it’s not all about enabling users to explore the mobile Internet. Goojet will also work with businesses to help them build their own widgets. “They can do that internally without engaging with us. However, we have a lot of businesses involved in activities and partnerships where they use the Goojet platform to accomplish this.”

MOBILE SEARCH: Look for it! “We’re going to be indexing all the widgets, allowing them to show up in mobile search results as well as Web search results (via Google, Yahoo, Microsoft).” Each of the icons [that represent a widget] will be “a little HTML site (!) that can be referenced by Google….You will eventually be able to use Google to search for new widgets and we hope - that as they become more popular - to see them higher in the Google search results on Web and mobile.”

DISCOVERY: To help users navigate the categories and “channels” Goojet will also create directories and menu trees. “We’ll have mobile search, but we’ll also have easy categories like news, sports, entertainment.” No rocket science here, but Goojet will also harness the wisdom of crowds to let people create and populate their own categories. Another input will be the actual popularity of the widgets themselves. Human judgment will be a factor in deciding which widgets are promoted in a kind of “top ranked” list (along with the widgets promoted because the companies are active Goojet partners, no doubt). Overall, popularity will be a mix of the stars that users give the widgets plus a weighting based on the actually popularity of the individual widget. Data points like this one will “automatically” figure into the equation that essentially bubbles up widgets to the top of the catalogue.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 10:41 am and is filed under Content Discovery, Local Search, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Networking, Personalization, Recommendation, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.