*update please visit Victus Media for information, the ad tool is no longer supported. The current web app is live here imagebrowser.heroku.com*
I bumped into a great php coder yesterday on Google wave, Tyler Gillies. We're now looking forward to starting a business with Tyler's prototype. He was able to quickly evolve my example, by connecting user's social media with relevant ads from Amazon. This is the early form of the code available for insert into any web page or blog. Big thanks to Bostjan (and Andraz) from Zemanta for their early support and great work on their semantic tool. They'll be getting a portion of the revenue generated based on access to their API, we still need to finalize a fee that fits well with their teams business plan. Special thanks to cofounder Vladimir Vukicevic, I'm sure he'll be happy to see this concept advance past the abstract phase, to the testing phase.
Insert the following snippet into a text widget on the side of your wordpress blog, or in any site that allows iframes (mycoolidnumber is your Amazon affiliate ID):
Updated Ruby on Rails version: (*update please visit Victus Media for updates*)
<iframe width="100%" height="600" src="http://imagebrowser.heroku.com?type=caro&associate=mycoolidnumber" frameborder=0></iframe>
or if you don't have an Amazon affiliate account:
<iframe width="100%" height="600" src="http://imm.victusmedia.com?type=caro" frameborder=0></iframe>
The code is live on this site and Tyler's, feel free to test it out. (see Contextual Advertising 0.1 in my sidebar to the right).
By default the split is 10% to our business, and 90% to host (if no amazon affiliate link is entered 100% will go to our business). Right now that's the personal Amazon IDs of mine and Tyler's.
This is done by randomizing the ID used in the link, and should be publicly trackable (we're both at 5% at this point).
All readers are encouraged and welcome to try this out, it should be a blast. If the Zemanta API calls top out, hold off for a bit and I'll work with them on getting us a temporary expansion of the calls to verify we actually have a working business model.
1) Short term goals include incorporation, and improvements on the efficacy of the algorithm (pattern matching techniques, subgroups, clustering).
2) Longer term plans include powerful intelligent search assistant tools, to enable richer and more fluid user browsing experiences as well as personally relevant ads (dumb ads are history).
We setup a business web site at victusmedia.com
To see the history of this project check Monetization Web 2010.
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- Making The Web Smarter (myventurepad.com) Nice work by Fred Wilson