July « 2009 « Gigya's Blog

Archive for July, 2009

Applying Social Technologies – Part 4

Monday, July 27th, 2009

- Continued from 7/20/09. This is the final post in the Applying Social Technologies series.

GIGYA SOCIALIZE

Gigya Socialize is a social API aggregator built to address the challenges of integrating social APIs. Gigya Socialize makes it easy for publishers and brands to increase traffic, registrations and engagement. Specific benefits include:

Single API integration: Publisher sites who integrate the single Gigya Socialize API have access to the available social and identity APIs from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Yahoo, Gmail and AOL. Right now, IT departments are spending valuable time learning about OpenID, installing and configuring open source libraries, customizing integrations with existing infrastructure and maintaining the latest features and capabilities of available APIs. Gigya Socialize removes these barriers so publishers and brands that want to take advantage of social technologies can do so without having to develop new technical expertise upfront.
Management of API updates: API updates released by social networks and identity providers are managed by dedicated Gigya engineers, enabling sites to implement more functionality without requiring ongoing technical support or resources.
Integration of new APIs: As social APIs open up, Gigya engineers will add them to the Gigya Socialize API allowing publisher and brand sites to access the functionality of these APIs without having to integrate them separately.
Off-the-shelf integration components: To help publisher sites quickly take advantage of the existing social APIs, Gigya Socialize has three off-the-shelf components. These components include: the Login component, which allows users to login to a publisher site using their social network credentials; the Friend Selector, which allows users to invite their friends to join them on the site; and the Live Event component, which allows users to update their status and engage other users in real time.
Plug-ins to portals, blogs and directory sites: Gigya offers Drupal and WordPress plug-ins to make it easier for sites built on these platforms to authenticate users via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other Open Id providers and increase site traffic by posting user status updates to the newsfeeds of users’ social networks.
Full-service and onsite support: Gigya provides full-service support to publishers who have unique issues or questions about how to integrate the product. Additionally, Gigya offers a fee-based enterprise support program that can provide onsite resources for organizations that want a Gigya engineer for dedicated integration or other support.

(more…)

Tags: Authentication, Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter, Social Network, Socialize
Posted in Thought Leadership, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Free Gigya Socialize for Drupal webinar on 8/4/09 – Sign up today to learn about product features, implementation, and best practices

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Gigya & Acquia recently released the Drupal module for Socialize, enabling sites built on Drupal to social login services including Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter as well as OpenID providers like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail. Publishers using Socail Login have increased site registrations by more than 30%.

The new module makes it easy for Drupal site owners to:

Enable users to link existing accounts with social network and OpenID identities, and personalize the user experience by making it easy for sites to integrate user profile and social graph data.
Increase user acquisition by enabling users to invite friends to the site, or to share site content or a specific event. For example, using the Socialize module users can choose to invite their Facebook friends to comment on a new post they created.
Increase site traffic through viral promotion, enabling users to send status updates, tweets and newsfeed events to their social networks. The Gigya Social Login module has been fully integrated with Drupal’s user action and trigger core modules so Drupal site owners can configure the viral promotion channels to work dynamically.
Easily configure the user experience, design, and module functionality using the Drupal administration panel.

To learn more about how to use Social Login on your Drupal website, Acquia and Gigya are jointly hosting a webinar on August 4th, 2009 which will cover product features, implementation, and best practices.

Click here to register.

To download the module directly, visit http://drupal.org/project/gigya

Tags: Authentication, Drupal, Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter, Socialize
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Applying Social Technologies – Part 3

Monday, July 20th, 2009

- Continued from 7/13/09

TECHNOLOGIES SIMPLIFIED

The services offered by social networks and web mail platforms are in many cases built on top of technology standards. These standards include OpenID and OAuth.

OpenID is an open decentralized standard for user authentication and access control. Publishers who accept OpenID allow users to login with that consistent digital identity. Sites or companies that provide OpenIDs allow users to take their credentials from these sites and use them to login to other sites. Providers include AOL, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, PayPal and Yahoo, among others. There are over 27,000 sites that accept credentials from OpenID providers for login and registration purposes.

Publishers integrating OAuth can authenticate users in a way similar way to that of OpenID. OAuth is different however, because it also gives publishers a session key that enables those publishers to access profile and social graph data.

(more…)

Posted in Thought Leadership, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Turner Sports implements Gigya Socialize on NBA.com, NASCAR.com

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

We recently published a case study on our Socialize implementation with Turner Sports for the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. The story was also covered by AdAge. It was extremely rewarding to demonstrate the indisputable value of providing users with not only social functionality, but with choice.

The Challenge: Engaging NBA Fans on TNT.tv Online
Sports fans are social. Whether they are watching a game at a stadium or a bar, fans chat about players and stats, high five each other and cheer together when the momentum swings. To bring these “real-world” activities online, Turner Sports implemented Gigya’s Socialize technology to make it easy for fans to engage with friends from the top three social networks while watching the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on TNT.tv.

The Approach: Driving Engagement, Viral Promotion through Social Activity
Using Gigya Socialize, Turner became the first TV network to take an agnostic approach, letting users social login to any or all of the top three social networks: MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

(more…)

Posted in News | No Comments »

Applying Social Technologies – Part 2

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Continued from 7/6/09

NEW SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES: WHAT THEY DO
Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn grew by creating opportunities for people to recreate their offline personal networks through online tools. Now they are making those networks more widely available to publishers – through Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, and Sign in with Twitter – to enable users to register, connect and socialize on sites outside of the social networks. These social login services allow publishers to authenticate users, to promote by publishing content and activity back to the social network the user belongs to, to use profile data to enhance the site experience, and to tap into a user’s friend list (also called the social graph) to provide a more social experience. These services are delivered via APIs, or application programming interfaces, which are sets of routines or data structures that allow publishers to get information from, and send data to, the social networks.

Authenticate
Sites now can enable users to login in one-click to using existing online identities. When users login for the first time, sites can also invite users to register. Facebook reports that sites using social APIs to authenticate users have seen as many as 2 out of 3 new registrants use their Facebook identity, and those users have about 50% more engagement on sites.

Promote
Sites can enable users to publish site content, and even their own activity, to the newsfeed or notification systems of their social network. These communications reach a broad audience of that user’s friends and can drive traffic back to the publisher’s site. For example, a user who takes a quiz can choose to share their results with friends by publishing them to their social network via a status update or newsfeed item. Friends who see these newsfeed updates can then return to the site and take the quiz themselves.

(more…)

Posted in Thought Leadership | 3 Comments »

Jeremiah Owyang on Gigya Socialize “Get Ready As Corporate Sites and Social Networks Start To Connect”

Monday, July 13th, 2009

In his blog post today, Jeremiah Owyang comments on the situation, opportunity, challenges and solutions for brands looking to make their web presence more social.

He says: “In a recent report titled the “Future of the Social Web” we found that we are entering the era of social colonization, every webpage and experience will be social–even if brands choose not to participate. I spent time with Palo Alto startup Gigya who now has a product that enables brands to quickly allow users to login using third party identities (like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook) quickly to a corporate web experience. Right now, brands are ‘Pollinating’ the social web by letting their corporate created content spread to social networks. As a result, companies are going to start aggregating conversations –the natural reaction to centralize trusted discussions.”

Jeremiah does a nice job of laying out a getting started plan for brands – while it will certainly take some new skill sets we at Gigya are trying to make it as easy as possible for brands to take advantage of the powerful new social login tools provided by Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others.

Tags: Forrester, Gigya Socialize FacebookConnect MySpaceID Twitter, jowyang
Posted in News, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

Gigya Launches Socialize Plugin for WordPress

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

In our continued effort to make it easy for sites to add social and authentication features, we’ve recently launched a Socialize plug-in for WordPress.
The new Social Plug-in enables WordPress sites to easily add multi-dimensional social and authentication functionality by providing a single point of access to Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter as well as OpenID providers like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail.
Features include:

Users can log into the site using their social network or webmail identity, enabling the Socialize plug-in to personalize the user experience by displaying the user’s name and image.
Users can update their status, promoting their activity to the newsfeeds of their social network, or invite specific social network friends with a custom message, driving traffic back to the original site.
Users can post comments on blog posts directly to their newsfeed on Facebook.
Users can share content or a specific event on the website.

Currently, plug-ins for both WordPress and bbPress, WordPress’ forum software solution are available. They are both fully configurable from the WordPress administration panel, require little time to install, and require no programming knowledge.
Socialize’s code is also OpenSource, so developers can customize it as desired for their specific site needs.
The plug-in is available on Gigya’s website at http://www.gigya.com/public/Content/GS/Plugins.aspx or on WordPress at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gigya-socialize-for-wordpress/

Posted in News, Tools | 6 Comments »

Applying Social Technologies – Part 1

Monday, July 6th, 2009

How publishers and advertisers can use Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter and OpenID to Increase Registrations, Traffic and Engagement

Social networks and features, from Facebook and Twitter to activity feeds and status updates, have changed forever how consumers use the Web, challenging publishers and advertisers with “destination” websites to find ways to remain relevant to core users as well as engage and grow new audiences. Rather than a challenge of content innovation, the challenge instead centers on how to improve user experience in light of how people are using the web today. From News to eCommerce to Entertainment, almost any site can better engage and grow its audience by creating a user-centric and social experience, one that makes use of newly available technologies to enable a more accessible, personalized, engaging and ultimately shareable experience.

If you have a website and want to better understand Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Social Login with Twitter and OpenID; why it makes sense to add authentication and social functionality using these providers; or how new services can help simplify the implementation and management process, this series is for you. From increasing user registrations to enabling rich social features, many tools and services are available today to help publishers successfully evolve their user experience. This blog series will touch on the key trends dictating this evolution; introduce, define and provide guidelines for using the key social technologies available today; show case-study examples of how industry leaders are already using these technologies to redefine what it means to provide a great user experience on the web; and show how new services can make implementation easier than ever.

(more…)

Tags: Authentication, Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, OpenID, Twitter
Posted in Thought Leadership | 2 Comments »

Archive for July, 2009

Recent Posts