08 April 2009 | General | Ankesh Kumar

Our objective with the Share+ widget is for Publishers to turn a utility into a user engagement tool. So we’d like to share a case study of two of our partners.

In Summary: Firstly, “email a friend” is the elephant in the room, Secondly, Share+ doubles user interaction.

Read on…

Firstly, a national IT Publication, the date range was Q1 2009.

In Q1 there were 30,860 “email a friend” actions

There were 6172, social bookmarking actions, of those 1871, 30% were Share+ generated. i.e. Users saving the links into their Share+ account and/or being

referred back to the publisher from the most shared within the outgoing email.

Without Share+, Social Bookmarking(FB, Twitter, etc) accounted for 12% of all sharing, with Share+ Social Bookmarking accounted for 30% of all sharing.

Secondly, for a regional newspaper in Texas.

In Q1 there were 1520 “email a friend” actions and 376 social bookmarking actions.

Of those 376, 80% (302) were Share+ actions i.e. users clicking on the most shared within the outgoing email or using the GTVT save within the widget. Without GTVT, social bookmarking(FB, Twitter, etc) accounted for 5% of all sharing, with Share+ 20%.

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17 December 2008 | General | Ankesh Kumar

Since we’ve launched we keep getting the same question, is this not what sharethis/addthis do?

So I thought I’d address this to clarify our position.

For Grouptivity the Share widget is a means to an end, it’s not an end in itself. Absolutely we allow users to share content to whatever service they want to as do other players in the space. For us this is where the fun starts not ends.

Firstly, the user can save all the interesting stuff they’ve emailed/bookmarked or posted.

Secondly, their friends can see what they’ve been sharing/saving, they might be interested in their friends stuff and vice versa.

Thirdly, the publisher extends their relationship with the user as they are interacting with their content. Bear in mind this interaction would normally would happen in email or a third party site.

Fourthly, google adsense is inserted in that environment we create. So more users interaction within grouptivity more money. 

Lastly, all the ad revenue goes to the Publisher.

What’s not to love?

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15 December 2008 | General | Ankesh Kumar

1. Keyboard/MP3 Player Shoes-Get the most out of your shoes this holiday. Michael Jordan move over because there are a new pair of shoes in town. http://www.geeksugar.com/283885

2. Watermelon USB Flash Drive-There is a new kind of fruit in town. This may look familiar, but actually if you look closer you’ll see that this fun gadget stores memory. About 8GB to be exact. http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/watermelon-usb-flash-drive-8gb-food-shaped-usb-storage/

3. WMA + MP3 Player Sunglasses-Wow, you get two for one when you wear these sunglasses. Protect your eyes from the sun while listening to your favorite tunes.

http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/wma-mp3-player-sunglasses-2gb-stereo-sound-effect/

4. Led Motherboard Menorah-With this battery operated menorah, you never have to worry about the house burning down. It’s battery operated plus it’s, you know, cool

5. Giant Microbes Orthomyxovirus The flu-Cuddle up to a nice fuzzy comfortable pillow and if you ever wanted to call in sick when you weren’t now you can without the guilt. http://www.gifts.com/products/X-treme-Geek/Giant-Microbes-ORTHOMYXOVIRUS-The-Flu?p=5441:250+0900:49&kwd=x-treme+geek

6. Watch Spy Camera + Wireless Receiver-For all your covert operations this is the perfect tool. No one will ever no you are on a mission. Warning, this may not be suitable for all ages. http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/watch-spy-camera-wireless-receiver-ultimate-spy-kit/

7. Floating Picture Frame-Can’t go wrong with a picture frame. Your grandmother will be blown away by this cool advanced gadget. Something she never thought she would see. http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/floating-picture-frame-35-x-5-inch-pictures/

8. Robot USB Drive-Your robot might be the only person you can trust with your information. He’s not only a best friend, but a storage facility as well. Keep him close.

http://ageekspot.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/geek-gift-robot-usb-drive/

9. USB Flash Drive Lighter 8GB-Now you can carry your data in your pocket and be able to light a cigarette at the same time. Wow, technology is really advancing with this cool flash driver lighter. http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/usb-flash-drive-lighter-8gb/

10. Cell Phone Watch-Instead of telling the time from our cell phones we can now talk on our watches. That means you’ll never lose your cell phone cause it’s attached to you. Oh and it’s stainless steal, so you can wear in style. http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/mind-blowing-cell-phone-watch-in-stainless-steel/

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11 December 2008 | General | Ankesh Kumar

Grouptivity has developed a social infrastructure capable of turning readers into a more engaged users of your site. The sharing features drive additional page views to your site, both from new users, and from a more engaged current user base. These page views can be monetized with advertising placements.   We serve Adsense into the Social sharing and saving environment and giving 100% of the adsense revenue to the Publisher. 

If you are interested in offering your readers a means to save and share your content with their friends, you can go to www.grouptivity.com download a widget, enter your adsense account and you are ready to go.

As your users save and share you get loyal users more referral traffic and make some money. The more your usage by your readers the more benefit for you so we’ve outlined some benefits to educate your users on the service.

User Benefits

Why it’s Better -

Why it’s easier -

We created Grouptivity to make it easy to share with your network. Everything’s in one place - your favorite people and your favorite content. Everything you share is automatically saved - if it’s good enough to share, it’s good enough to save. And you can access it anywhere - just log-in.

Why it’s fun

When you send to a friend, you’ll know when they read it, and if they shared it too. Create a discussion around content - it stays private, is easy to view, and easy to find later.

Share, Save and be Social

3 Comments

05 December 2008 | General | Ankesh Kumar

Aliza Sherman over at Web Worker Daily wrote an insightful piece on what we are trying to do at Grouptivity. The question was asked does Grouptivity have any chance of overturning  ShareThis and AddThis as market leaders.

The short answer is absolutely.

The reason is very simple. There is no formal business relationship between the publisher and widget provider. It’s simple to install and simple to remove.

Our widget is simple to install but it’s an entree into an environment where users can save, share and  discuss all content they find interesting. By inserting ads and sharing the revenue with the publisher this implies a much tighter relationship.

To that end we have a big announcement next week.

Aliza’s full article is at

Grouptivity Takes on ShareThis and AddThis

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24 November 2008 | General | Ankesh Kumar

With 80% of internet users sharing web content through e-mail, publishers are always looking for web tools that increase engagement and leverage their reader’s own social networks to drive traffic.

Enter Grouptivity, an innovative web developer with a viral share to social network tool that Techweb’s InformationWeek.com is piloting.  With the new and improved “email a friend” and social bookmarking functions, users can instantly e-mail articles with their social networks, post content directly to popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and revisit content they’ve shared in their personal “MyShares” box which automatically saves everything that’s sent.

Michael Grover, Director of SEO Strategy for TechWeb, concurs, “Media companies today must provide users with more and better ways to engage with their products.  Grouptivity enables us to add value to the user’s engagement with our sites.”

Shared content that’s filtered by users is a win-win for readers and publishers - people get content delivered that’s specific to their needs and interests without having to use search engines or subscribe to RSS feeds, and publishers get valuable referral traffic as well as targeted advertising opportunities.

“Users may read or browse dozens of pages but they would share typically less than 10% of those pages.  This is very valuable data since at that point in time a user has identified one piece of content above others to share. This implies more engagement and value to that user and their friend(s). Grouptivity takes that engaged user and provides more functionality for the users. Which in turn provides targeted advertising opportunities for Publishers,” said Ankesh Kumar, CEO of Grouptivity.

Key to the success of the tool is its integration into established user behavior.  “Grouptivity’s power lies in the fact that we do not change users behavior, we let them use the tools and services they currently use, email or their favorite social media sites,” said Kumar.

To test out the Grouptivity function on InformationWeek, go to an InformationWeek.com story and click on the “Email this Page” icon.

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24 November 2008 | General | Ankesh Kumar

Last week, Glam launced their application platform which allows their Publisher network to simply add new apps to their sites. Techcrunch did a nice write up, Glam Media’s Application Platform goes live.

For this release we built an OpenSocial widget and added a really cool feature, most shared from the site. I’ve attached an image to give you a preview of how it would look on a publisher’s site.

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07 November 2008 | General | Ankesh Kumar

Earlier this week Chris Miller, The Social Networker wrote an interesting article on Louis Gray’s blog. Combine Friends and Google Reader for Best News Filtering.

The basic premise of the article I found intriguing since it emphasis a theme we are very fond of. Leveraging your friends work to finding interesting content. In the article Chris talks how he’s doing this with Google reader, certainly very ingenious.

The larger issue here is time, and the amount of content on the web. How does one filter content to save time in finding the interesting stuff.

We agree, leverage your friends and vice versa.

Cheers

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06 November 2008 | Buzz, Events, General, News | Ankesh Kumar

The election’s not over yet (well one is).  If you’re experiencing post-election blues, are suffering from electoral map withdrawal symptoms, no worries, you can vote for Grouptivity!  We’re running a bi-partisan campaign to win best Social Networking Application for the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards.

Vote for us, tell your friends to vote for us, tell people you barely know to vote for us - we’re not picky!  Our campaign platform is to create the best content sharing application on the web, so you can e-mail a friend, post to your social networks, and see what your friends are sharing direct from your browser.  Free!

And we promise - no robocalls.

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04 November 2008 | Buzz, General, Technology, Trends | Ankesh Kumar

We’ve all done it.  Found an amazing piece of content on the web, only to bookmark and then forget what we called it.  Copy and pasted the URL in an e-mail to send a friend, then lost the trail of the discussion in our overflowing e-mail box.

While content may be king on the social web, trying to keep track of it all and sharing with friends is no easy task.  As I’m writing this article, I just remembered something a friend e-mailed me that I want to include, and now I have to scroll through all the names in my e-mail to see if I can find it (hopefully hasn’t been deleted already, or relegated to my “Old Mail” box).

Which is why I’m trying to get everyone I know to start using the new Firefox add-on from Grouptivity.

To start, let’s look at the numbers.  In a recent study conducted by social scientist and viral marketing guru Dan Zarrella, he found that 80% of the people he surveyed use e-mail as their primary method of sharing content found on the web.  Surprisingly, this was evenly distributed across the board, from what he calls “High Reach Individual Sharers” to the average user.  So while there’s an increase in content sharing in individual social networks, the primary language of shared content continues to be e-mail.

But what if you could have the best of all worlds?  E-mail a friend direct from your browser, post to your favorite social networks like Facebook, Myspace and Delicious, and save the content in a folder that you can categorize when you bookmark, or search later using keywords.

Sounds perfect.  Additional and appreciated features include the ability to upload your e-mail addresses from all your address books like AOL and Gmail, and you can receive a notification when your friend opens your e-mail (now you’ll know if they really read that low-fat curry vegan recipe).

After all, the best web search engine is your own personal network of friends.

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