Kelvin Beecroft is the head of Mashable Labs, which conducts unique research into social networking add-ons. You can request data via the Consulting form.
We've looked at some familiar segments for social networking add-ons over the past few weeks - MySpace slideshows, photo sites, video sites and music players. But some of these tools are in a class of their own. BunnyHero Labs, for instance, is in a rather unique market of providing fun little flash-based adopted pets to add to websites, blogs, and of course profiles on MySpace, Xanga, Piczo, Friendster, and so on. There aren’t many competitors in this field but the metrics coming out of Mashable Labs indicate it’s a good field to be in - BunnyHero content appears on more MySpace profiles than RockYou.
One feature which really sets these widgets apart, and something many widget developers don’t understand, is the ability to personalize the thing…not customize, personalize. Geeks may think it’s enough to let users customize the stuff they've created, but users are people and people like to make stuff their own in some manner. So in a stroke of genius, BunnyHero Labs has made it possible for pet owners to name their adopted pets - not select a name from a dropdown list, but actually type in whatever they want.
How big is BunnyHero Labs? It's huge. Currently BunnyHero Labs’ content can be found on 755,000 MySpace profiles, which puts them in the same league as RockYou with 720,000 profiles. They’ve got fun and unique content which is relevant to their user base and can be personalized – all good points for other widget developers to keep in mind. There are certainly other aspects to widget development; usability, accessibility, utility, and all the other things we learned in computer science classes. But BunnyHero Labs is worth a look because they’ve also considered the people aspect.
Their growth is a fairly modest 1% since September 2006, so stirring the site up a little could probably help. From a user’s perspective I’d like to see the content out in front on the homepage, and perhaps more frequent releases of new pets.
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