Weekly Ad Based iGoogle Gadget AND My Yahoo! Open App Live

Posted on 26 June 2009 by Patrick Flanagan No Comments

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The possibilities of distribution points for weekly ad content continues to increase.  Today two versions of the same core weekly ad application went live for Target. These apps were built to live on user’s start / homepages that iGoogle and My Yahoo! pretty much have a monopoly on.  Specifically the two apps that went live were for:

• My Yahoo! using the new beta Open Apps that are built on the new Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP).  To check it out for yourself and/or install on your own My Yahoo! page, just click to begin the ‘install’ process
  
• iGoogle built using the Google Gadgets API. To check it out for yourself and/or install on your own iGoogle page, just click to begin the very easy ‘install’ process

Here is what the two apps look like in their native state once they have been “installed” within a user’s personalized homepage (Note that all throughout this post I use the word ‘install’ very loosely. What I am trying to refer to is the process of allowing and adding these apps/gadgets to a user’s homepage. No real code is actually being installed on a user’s local machine):

This is how the My Yahoo! open app appears on a user's homepage in its native 'small' state

The iGoogle gadget and how is appears on a user's homepage in it's native 'un-expanded' state

Here is what each app looks like once a user chooses to expand them to the ‘large’ view:

This is how the My Yahoo! open app appears in its "expanded" state

This is how the iGoogle gadget appears in its "expanded" state

So now for a quick comparison of these two competing platforms:

• My Yahoo!
  • A much more complicated ‘install’ process that involves up to three different clicks, compared to the one (1) click ‘install’ on iGoogle.  Yes, Yahoo! Open Apps allow for more user driven privacy controls and a great degree of social features, so these come at a cost of a more involved ‘installation’ process
  • The “full” or “expanded” view of the app can be built in Adobe Flash / Flex, which in this case the Target app is.  This just opens up the door to a richer, more engaging user experience
  • The “full” or “expanded” view has some graphical display ads wrapped around the content. I happened to catch one ad with some layering / shine-through issues going on that was interfering with the right hand part of the app
  • By default, it appears that the Target Open app within My Yahoo! is setup to auto opt-in all users into the below two (2) types of communications.  Great for the marketer, but maybe not so great for the unknowing consumer:
    • Sharing a stream of broadcast updates
    • A weekly email (from the app
• iGoogle
  • Within the native, non-expanded view, the gadget gets cut-off.  This looks sort of odd and is a bummer since this is the view state that most users will see the vast majority of the time
  • Built using light, fast and universal coding languages such as HTML, Javascript and DHTML
  • Since it is not built in flash, in this case a much deeper integration is exposed at the item detail page that pulls in an Amazon.com hosted layer that brings in all sorts of rich functionality like local inventory look up, one-click add to cart, add to lists, ratings and reviews
  • If a user decides to ’share’ the app with friends, within iGoogle the app makes some useful suggestions as to which friends of yours you might consider based upon your emailing habits within Gmail. With Yahoo!, this is just one big blank box that is nowhere as user friendly

Here is a complete set of production screen grabs of the widgets from both iGoogle and My Yahoo! posted up on Flickr just in case. Finally, a bit of well deserved recognition to the Target and AKQA teams that did all of the heavy lifting to get these fairly complex apps launched.