AOL Celebrates First Anniversary With Goowy Media, Inc.

AOL People Networks celebrated the first anniversary of its acquisition of enterprise widget platform Goowy Media, Inc. Founded in 2004, Goowy makes it easy for content owners and third-party developers to build, syndicate and measure user interaction for widgets across social networks such as myAOL, Bebo, and Facebook. Throughout 2008, Goowy drove almost 2 billion widget impressions for AOL, and served more than 3 billion widgets.

Prior to joining AOL People Networks, Goowy created original widgets for myAOL, (http://my.aol.com), and a number of major retailers, and since has allowed third parties within AOL to create widgets including, Daily Horoscope, MapQuest, MP3 of the Day, and PopEater's Pop the Question.

"Over the past year, we've put a lot of focus at Goowy on building the most interactive and innovative widgets on our platform, and developing the tools that content creators and third-party developers need to measure engagement across the social networking community," said Gary Benitt, founder & COO of Goowy Media, Inc. "Joining the AOL family has really accelerated our ability to do this -- we've since grown our team, migrated to the AOL infrastructure and signed on with new partners. We're excited to offer unique monetization opportunities for them."

With its rich analytics, content creators have the power to better understand how their widgets are performing and being used, allowing them to serve their users more relevant content and advertising. Goowy's sophisticated measurement tools include visual representations of where users have clicked within a particular widget, illustrating interactivity as a "click heatmap", and allowing developers to visualize how users engage with their widgets.

Goowy also offers a dynamic ad unit that includes real-time content and provides a rich media experience with greater interactivity than traditional online ads. Since its acquisition by AOL, Goowy has launched widgets as ads on both the AOL Network and third party networks for a range of leading retailers. To increase the viral nature of its widgets, Goowy lets consumers to copy widgets to social networks, blogs, and their desktops, creating both additional exposure and turning consumers into marketers.