Building in the capability for visitors to your web site to share with their friends is nothing new – since the Web 2.0 term was coined there have been numerous approaches: For marketing campaigns, the “friend-get-friend” implementation was designed to minimize acquisition costs; as a marketer how can you maximise the impact of each person who arrives on your site by building in an simple “Tell your friend about this” that was traditionally a simple form that fired off an email to the recipient. Then things began to explode with content sharing through Digg, RSS, Facebook Connect etc.
I’m on Windows Live Messenger pretty much all the time; so when Messenger Connect came out of beta last week I took a keen interest – this allows partners to embed the world’s largest IM network into their sites and apps.
An example of this in a shopping scenario: Imagine you’re looking for a camera and want to check with your resident photo expert if it’s the right model – fire up the Messenger button and chat with your buddy about it to get instant feedback. So much easier than copy/pasting the URL and determining the best way of sending – if they’re online you can share it, if not you can pick someone else!
We’ll be posting more in-depth info shortly, and hopefully showcase some pretty cool UK sites that are implementing – in the meantime, check out Angus Logan’s blog on the improvements in this version – and start making your sites more social.
