Having buzzed Creamaid without pulling back the curtain earlier in the week, the time has come to explore the service in more detail. As you can tell, I'm into the idea...

Here's why. At it's most abstract, Creamaid is a bridge between the static web and the dynamic web, a link between websites and blogs, and a way to integrate the two. It is a tool designed to allow corporations and organisations to "seed" conversations in the blogosphere, and then keep track of the freedback. How, I hear you cry, & what does this have to do with Plugaid?

Well, Creamaid widgets are from the same company, & are super-charged Plugaid widgets. A company or conversation initiator with a viral advertising budget creates a widget for themselves with Creamaid, and installs the widget on the page that will be the hub of the conversation. What's new here is that this can be a "regular website" & not only a blog. Joe's Hardware could widget their fall sale, or International Soda Pop could widget their new "atomic bubblegum" soda. Next step, bloggers find the widget. As the Creamaid folks say:

There are three ways a blogger can discover a conversation:

1. In the wild: On a website that contains the conversation
2. Virally: From another blogger's post
3. Browsing: From the updated list on CREAMaid's main page

Bloggers who have found the widget and are in the mood to dish out a good freedbacking then author relevant & responsive posts that critique, boost or otherwise discuss the content on the source page. When the post is published, the author includes the CreamAid embed, and this duplicates the widget on their post. Blogger Tip: Blogger seems to require the manual addition of a closing embed tag such as this </embed> to the cut 'n paste code that is provided by the service. After you paste in the embed, manually append the closing tag, & don't click back to the compose side of the window or your tag will go awol.

Posts are approved before being included in the conversation / listed on the widget, and the author of each approved post is financially rewarded 30 days later, currently via Paypal. You'll note that my previous teaser post has been approved & is now listed on the widget. (There's no budget for this conversation, though, so no payment )

So... viral advertising that crosses over between blogs and websites. Curious that you're only paid if you're included, & that the person who initiated the conversation is the one approving the posts. I guess there's a chance that you won't get paid if your review of Atomic Bubblegum soda suggests that it tastes like motor oil.... Since this particular widget is set to support 1000 posts, it is also reasonable to assume that your post will eventually fall off the top of the list and spend some time in scroll-bar purgatory. I wonder what it would take to add an "authority" sort to the widget as well as a "most recently approved" sort. In a genuine business review situation, I might be interested in cutting to the chase & seeing what a "big" blogger had to say.... That said, I'm all for efforts to energize the static web and to tie the blogosphere to happenings in the real world, & the idea of a viral advertising tool that can compensate readers is v. cool.

One other question from the conversation-starter's end. Let's say I seed a conversation, and specify a budget of $1000... If only 2 posts respond to the widget, do I give them $500 each (big incentive to pick up the widget) or do they only get the $1 per post that the 1000-post widget would support if it was filled w/ freedback?

Read more on the Creamaid site, & if you want to spin off this post & discuss Creamaid on your own blog, by all means click the header of the attached widget and then the "participate" button in the lower right to submit your post to Trent @ Creamaid for widgetization... Check out the widget to see other Creamaid related posts & to see an example of a widget-tracked conversation which, now that it includes some "real" content, demonstrates the power of the tool by linking to Snipperoo, and from there Postbubble, showing me another discussion thread on this that I would otherwise not have found. See Alice @ Tiara.org for another review of the service.



Filed in: blogging blogtech creamaid plugaid