New and Improved Wibiya Open to the Masses

Wibiya is a toolbar that we first covered back in June. It provides a wealth of tools that serve to keep visitors glued to your site. They have recently gone public so anyone can install the simple toolbar and make their blog or website much more useful to readers. It also provides feedback regarding whether it’s working or not.

When they first launched, Wibiya only provided a small set of basic but powerful applications. Things like search, translate, subscribe, share, and recent posts were about all you had. Wibiya has now launched an entire application platform, giving you access to even more tools to keep your site sticky.

They are organized into categories like Increase Page Views, Time on Site, Content Sharing, Social Tools, Communication, and Enrich Content. There is definitely some overlap between categories, but there are now about 20 useful apps available. Some integrate with services like HeyZap, whos.among.us, Tinychat, and Cooliris.

Wibiya’s goal isn’t just to dazzle your visitors with a bunch of flashy gadgets, but to keep them interested by providing actual value to their experience. This is made more clear by the Badges feature.

To understand how this works, think about most of the widgets you already have on your blog. The most basic ones direct traffic away from your blog. With Wibiya badges, users get the same functionality they might find elsewhere embedded right in your website so they don’t have to leave. For instance, the Facebook Fan Page badge let’s users interact in detail with Facebook without leaving your site to go there. The Badges feature is actually just a simple HTML link that interacts with the Wibiya toolbar, so you can customize it to fit your site and pretty much stick one anywhere.

We have all seen busy websites with 3.5 million widgets all fighting for your attention and attempting to make the host site more valuable. What if you could take all your fancy widgets and put them in one neat little collapsible and customizable toolbar tucked away at the foot of your blog? Well, that’s what Wibiya is and you may be able to cut down on the clutter by giving it a try.

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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