Today we're interviewing with Jean François Ruiz & Sébastien Rousset, the two French guys who designed WidgetBooster. Back in 2008, the French social marketing field was a barren desert. In 2009, several French marketing facilities have seen the light of day, enabling French bloggers to benefit from services so far available only to the English speaking communities.

Oghme Comics :  A warm welcome to Jean François Ruiz & Sébastien Rousset, the creators of WidgetBooster, a division of the PowerOn company. Could you sum up for our readers, in a few words, what WidgetBooster is ?

WidgetBooster : WidgetBooster is a fair visibility exchange system for webmasters who share a common interest. It totals 16 different themes as of today, more than 750 editorial members, and more than 20 000 000 displayed banners in the past 30 days.

Oghme Comics : Who are you, can you tell us more about your professional and personal background ?

WidgetBooster : We both are computer engineers. We've been into computers since our childhood. And there's no coming back from there ;) It's not just the two of us on this project : Olivier Moreau is very dedicated to WidgetBooster. He's simply one of the best programmers we ever met so far.

Oghme Comics : how did you come to work together on this social marketing project ?

WidgetBooster : Long story, we began working on it together during high school, as a Junior Enterprise. We've always worked together since. We created the webdeux.info blog in 2005. We came to understand better how online communities interacted, and what unsatisfied needs bloggers could have.

Oghme Comics :  How do you account, given a very active French blogosphere, for the lack of promotional means available to French bloggers ?

WidgetBooster : There can be several reasons :

• unawareness that such partnerships do exist

• none of the models proposed meet the bloggers immediate needs

• no adequate technical solution is offered to meet these needs

Oghme Comics : The WidgetBooster Galaxy includes several solar systems : ComicsBooster, GirlsBooster, GamesBooster,... Let's tour the Theme Park !

WidgetBooster : Indeed, we've chosen to build different theme based sections for users. The most important thing for a website is to be able to benefit from a targeted audience generated traffic. More often than not, the existing networks haven't yet integrated that notion.

We'll cover a large number of different thematic universes, each available on the www.widgetbooster.com portal.

Oghme Comics : Project Wonderful, your American alter ego, offers a monetized based system. Why choosing an alternative which doesn't directly monetize traffic from your network's members ? Which are the advantages and drawbacks of such a system ?

WidgetBooster : Project Wonderful is a facility / marketplace offering advertisers means of buying traffic from editors. Our system is based on free exchange because it's the easiest way to facilitate the implementation of partnerships with other webmasters.

Oghme Comics : how do you operate your add targeting ? Do you intend to give your members means of targeting their own campaigns in the near future, or is this incompatible with the WidgetBooster philosophy ?

WidgetBooster : Add space targeting is based on the ability to provide more visibility to others. If your website helps other websites in one of the themed sub-networks to gain visibility, then your own visibility on these websites will increase. It will be proportional to what visibility you bring to others. It's a straightforward way of initiating fair-trade partnerships between websites with very different audience sizes, as long as they share a common theme.

As you've understood, we want to give everyone his chance to participate. Users already have the opportunity to target their adds by entering one of our theme based sub-networks.

Within a specific subnetwork, exchanges are not limited. We're in the process of designing a way for members to target their adds more specifically, but we can't yet tell you about it until we've officially released it ;)

Oghme Comics : Can you tell us more (without giving up your secret math formulas), how do you compute the users' credits : are they proportional to the number of clicks, the number of displayed banners, or other criterion ? How do you fight « click fraud » ? In one word, how do you guaranty the system's equity ?

WidgetBooster : Our system builds on the number of displayed banners and then evaluates the displayed banners' performance, based on the click through rate. Our system accepts multiple add formats : a 125x125 banner isn't equivalent to a 300x250. Our algorithm helps us balance a member's contribution according to the performance of his add spaces. We also take into account the performance of our members' adds, as they draw on their credit bank.

As for click fraud, as soon as it's detected, the responsible editor is shown the door.

Oghme Comics : let's focus on ComicsBooster, the WidgetBooster sub domain we're most interested in here at Oghme Comics. Ryan North designed Project Wonderful, initially, for the webcomics community and then enlarged the system to other branches of the blogosphere. How does comicsBooster position itself within the specificities of the webcomic community ? Do you intend to open the system to the international ?

WidgetBooster : Sure, we begin with France because this is where our base network is. Our platform's interface is already internationalized. However, we have to work some more on the valorisation part, because a visitor from the US on our network, on an advertising point of view, isn't equivalent to a French visitor. We have to figure the way of becoming the first international fair-traded banner exchange platform.

Oghme Comics :  What evolutions for WidgetBooster in the near future ?

WidgetBooster : Our road map is long, and grows longer with every piece of feedback we receive from our members.

Oghme Comics : Last, if you if you had to convince a blogger who didn't know anything about the WidgetBooster Exchange system, what would you tell them to prompt their decision to join you ?

WidgetBooster : We'd advise he reads our short introductory comic (in French), and hopefully he should fairly quickly understand the advantages of joining the themed sub network he's interested in.

As we're still in a launching period, we offer 5000 credits to all new WidgetBooster members.

Oghme Comics : Thank you !

WidgetBooster : Thanks a lot and see you soon !

RESOURCES :

WidgetBooster.com : Introduction to the themes of the Widgetbooster network

ComicsBooster.com : Widgetbooster's sub-domain for Comic Books
PowerOn.fr : The agency's main site, specialized in social marketing.
WidgetBooster explained in a short comic strip (French) :  http://widgetbooster.com/Home/BD