Press
SocialTwist Launches Tell-a-Friend Widget to Amplify the Power of Word of Mouth for Websites and Blogs
September 18, 2008 San Jose, CA
Word-of-mouth marketing is a proven effective way to spread awareness, which is why there is so much fuss currently about social networking. We've all seen bookmarking widgets proliferate at the bottom of nearly every blog post, online news article and website but these widgets only let readers vote up/down or bookmark the content within the vastness of the Internet. It's not quite word-of-mouth.
Tell-a-Friend is a complimentary tool that lets readers recommend and share content directly with their friends word of mouth style via any method: e-mail, IM, social networks, Twitter or even their blog. Without taking readers' attention away from the content page, Tell-a-Friend taps their internal address book to access their lists of friends from each of the supported networks and contact them individually or as a group. Even better, Tell-a-Friend gives site owners instant statistics on exactly what content is being spread by their readers.
"With Tell-a-Friend widget I know that messages are 'spread-worthy' on my blog", said Rajesh Setty of Blog.LifeBeyondCode.com. "It augments social bookmarking widgets nicely, as Tell-a-Friend is for personal one-to-one communication."
With direct marketing facing overuse and spam, more and more people trust only messages that come from a friend or a credible reference. And with the rapidly increasing use of instant messengers, personal blogs, RSS feeds and social networks, Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is increasingly becoming the key promotional medium on the Internet.
"We saw a need for a tool like Tell-a-Friend, which websites and blogs can readily use as the ultimate facilitator of word of mouth", says Jay Pullur, founder of SocialTwist, the company that developed the Tell-a-Friend widget.
Sun Microsystems Inc. recently used Tell-a-Friend to launch a new Facebook game, myPicks Beijing 2008, that let people play along with the excitement of the Summer Games in Beijing. "We needed to reach a large audience very quickly, so we used the Tell-a-Friend widget on the home page to help us spread the word easily." said Prakash Narayan, Sr. Manager, Sun Microsystems Inc.
The Tell-a-Friend widget is available for free at www.socialtwist.com where one can plug some simple code into any website or blog in minutes without even creating an account. A paid version of the widget, hosted on Amazon AWS, is offered for corporate users who want more control and their own branding.
SocialTwist plans to expand the reach of Tell-a-Friend to include additional channels and social networks, including support for Google's OpenSocial.
Click here to try Tell-a-Friend on this press release to see how it works.
About SocialTwist
SocialTwist develops Widget Applications that add a new social dimension to websites and enterprise applications. These Widget Applications seamlessly enhance existing site/application without reengineering effort or long implementation cycles. SocialTwist is a business of Pramati.
Contact
Brian Warren
brian@ojoin.com
650-440-0427