Today we at ActiveAccess launched the Beta version of the ParentPower Index application. As many of you know, ActiveAcess develops custom-branded applications for media companies, corporations, colleges and universities, non-profits and government agencies. This application launch represents the first time we have developed one of our own for an existing community.

In developing this application (and its corresponding Index of the top 200 parenting bloggers), we have been working for several months with many bloggers in the community – gathering their input. We want to especially thank the focus group participants for their great suggestions for improvement. We are still gathering ideas on how to make the application and Index better, and appreciate the continued input.

As of today we have added over 200 bloggers into the index and hope that the community will add many more fantastic parent bloggers over the next few weeks.

We also hope that during our Beta phase you will continue to help us make a number of tweaks to our offering. Be sure to give us your feedback. We have set up a survey at PollDaddy, and you can access us directly at myvoice [at] parentpowerindex dot com, or on Twitter at Twitter.com/ParentPower.

ParentPower is broken down into two parts, the Desktop Application and the Index and Headlines. Here is a some information about each of them.

The Desktop Application and Reader

The ParentPower Desktop Application is designed to make your life easier and to help you find great content fast. In the ParentPower button you can find the index, blogger headlines, BlogHer Mommy and Family, Sk*rt Family and Parenting, and CNN Health/Parenting.

In the menu there are quick links to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Sk*rt. And we have put together a list of links that you might find useful such as movies, traffic, shopping and more.

On the left sidebar, the application includes games, parenting videos and podcasts – which you can find in the media feeds on the Menu. Plus, we are known for delivering the weather.

We have also included an RSS reader that you can customize. If you aren’t using an RSS reader, it is a powerful and simple tool. If you do have an RSS reader, you can use this one for specialized tasks and to cut down on clutter in your main reader.

The Index and Headlines

Rankings. Some people like them and some people don’t, but we have seen first-hand how they have enabled other communities to easily discover and enjoy bloggers. In fact, we have taken this a step further and put together a Headlines page, so that you can quickly get a snapshot of what is happening in the Parenting Blogosphere. We hope this brings great visibility for the bloggers in the index and for parents looking for parenting tips and other information. Plus, it means you don’t have to be a top-ranked blogger to get noticed. We have put together a primer on using ParentPower to promote your blog.

Index Methodology

The Index uses a percentile ranking system that uses Technorati inbound links and rank, Bloglines subscriptions, Alexa rank, Google PageRank, and Yahoo inbound links. All of these are averaged and each blog is given a percentile score. We adjusted the formula so that the blog defaults to its highest possible rank. As you will see, many blogs have identical positioning on the index. You can read more about the ParentPower methodology on the page we put together for that purpose.

Posted By Terence Thomas
Interactive Marketing Manager, BIA Information Network
Email: tthomas@activeaccess.comOver the past year or so, we at BIA Information Network (BIN) have been working hard to improve ActiveAccess. There’s a lot that goes on “behind the scenes” here to make this application better for you and your users. On March 19^th, 2008 we held a webinar to showcase we announced four new features that we’ve added. Click here to watch and listen to the event: http://www.activeaccess.com/webinars.Our new features offer a pretty wide range of functionality and capabilities, all designed to enhance the experience for your users.RSS ReaderWe’ve added a new RSS Reader so that users can stay up to date and simplify their online reading experience, while still utilizing your application. You have the ability to pre-populate your own feeds into the Reader and your audience can easily add RSS Feeds from their favorite websites and blogs. The Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates its RSS feed daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won’t miss a thing, and it presents your users with all of their news sources in one convenient.

Interactive national weather map

We’ve created a new National Weather Map that is more interactive and provide you more detail regarding weather conditions all over the US. Weather conditions will be color coordinated and 3-Dimensional, plus you will be able to highlight, zoom in and zoom out of the counties experiencing bad weather.

Right-click capabilities inside Portal Window

Open the Portal Window and right click on the window to cut/copy/paste/print almost any web content that you see.

Privacy Statement and End User License Agreement (EULA)BIN takes the privacy of our customers (and the security of their Personal Information) very seriously. That’s why we will provide our Privacy Statement in all our application because you have the right to know what Personal Information we collect, how it is protected and used, and the circumstances under which it may be disclosed. You can find the Privacy Statement and the End User Licensing Agreement by clicking the Menu button.To get all of these new features, simply launch your application, click the Menu button and then click the bolded Get Latest Version link. Your application will automatically uninstall the old application and install the newest version with all these features.

Posted By Terence Thomas
Interactive Marketing Manager, BIA Information Network
Email: tthomas@activeaccess.com

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Terence Thomas, and I’m the Interactive Marketing Manager for BIA Information Network. I assist our clients in successfully using their ActiveAccess applications to create communicate and build strong, social connections with their audiences.

Back in November 2007, I was chosen to sit on a panel at the Ad-Tech Interactive marketing conference in NYC (http://www.ad-tech.com) where we discussed Word of Mouth (WOM) or Viral Marketing.

We had about 100 people in attendance and we spent the hour answering questions such as:

· Is the word “Viral” still relevant?

· Can something be made viral?

· What have been our experiences with Word of Mouth marketing?

· What are some tips that we can share in creating a viral campaign?

Everyone on that panel talked about viral videos, viral campaigns, viral zombie bites on Myspace pages, but I took a different approach. In explaining my experience with going “viral” I shared the following:

1. Going viral does not always mean your content (blog, video, e-mail, etc.) needs to be shocking, funny, or over the top in order to be compelling. You just want people to talk about your content with others.

2. For something to be viral, you need the following elements:

· an audience

· a compelling or relevant piece of content for that audience

· to teach your audience how to pass this compelling content on to others

· the audience to actually pass the content on to friends/family/colleagues, and

· to have the ability track the referrals

All this leads me to the ActiveAccess content delivery channel.

ActiveAccess has a word of mouth feature called “Share With A Friend” (SWAF). All “referrals” through SWAF are tracked, so if I send you an “invite” to download the app and you sign-up, download and run the app, your name is recorded in a database and I’m listed as the one who referred you. This is a tremendous benefit to our customers, because not only can they spread the application virally, they know who is helping to perform that task. This means they can develop and execute marketing campaigns around this feature – rewarding the best viral marketers from among their users.

Based on our research we are finding that almost every client has some amount of success regarding the use of the SWAF feature. We’ve noticed that the feature, when used, has a whopping average close to 80%. That’s HUGE in the world of viral marketing! This means that 8 out of 10 referral messages that users sent to friends and family encouraging them to sign-up and download the app, actually led to application downloads and later, use of the application.

We are trying to keep this momentum going through more training and awareness about the SWAF feature.

Imagine…. Instead of our clients doing all the heavy lifting to marketing their desktop applications, our clients can nearly double their user base by asking their audience to share in the task of promoting the app to their friends and family by using the viral marketing feature in their applications.