Hear About Conduit Yet?
Michael Arrington
52 comments »
Israel and California based Conduit is announcing a deal today with Google to provide search for their customizable toolbar product. The news itself isn’t all that interesting, although it will help Conduit with revenue. But the Conduit service itself is really taking off.
Conduit is a white-label, customizable toolbar for other web services. Like the Google and Yahoo, Conduit’s partners can offer users a branded toolbar with customizable functionality, such as a company logo, live chat, broadcasts to all users, etc. The problem, of course, is that most companies don’t have the resources or knowledge to create their own toolbar, and they are completely focused on their core business. Conduit is a good option for those companies.
The company now has 125,000 partners and 5,000,000 toolbar installs. Users can actually create a customized toolbar in a few steps (we’ve done it), for free, and offer it to users for download at a customized domain name ([example].ourtoolbar.com). If you register you can also qualify for revenue sharing from searches conducted on the toolbar.
We created a conduit toolbar for our New York party last November, and used it to update people on the details of the event. We had a few hundred downloads (most people still have it installed), and based on our experience we’re considering creating a permanent one that will include the most recent TechCrunch headlines and other functionality. If you have a community, this is a tool you may want to offer.
The company has raised $2 million in funding from Yozma, an Israeli venture firm.
I think conduit is going to do ok.
Toolbars are obnoxious in my opinion, the best bet is to develop plugins for something like the Google Toolbar. I mean, I’ve seen browsers with three or four toolbars installed, how is that useful to a consumer? Widgets and plugins are the future, toolbars are DOA IMHO.
This is not a bad idea, but how many toolbars can there be?
Alex
Toolbars are useful for b2b purposes, pointless for b2c, thanks for the tip im going to check them out for http://www.mediarfp.com
Richie Hecker
Http://www.Richhecker.com
Http://www.bootstrapper.com
Conduit toolbars have been polluting the mozilla addons site; here’s one of the worst examples: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3757/
It’s a “BBC Radio Toolbar”. Completely unendorsed by the BBC, just coining the money in of the back of someone else’s content without acknowledgement or disclosure. They need to sort out their transparency policy - at the moment, I equate them with the early days of payperpost.
If it has the same functionality as the Google and Yahoo Toolbars, great.
However, the only drawback is that especially with Yahoo, I have found that my machine is considerably slowed since the installation….
regrettably toolbars are already considered yesterday’s technology what with the obsession with widgets, but, thanks for the heads-up, sounds useful to me. bye-bye a9 anyways, to make room for this …
With about 10 hours of work you could create your own toolbar, superior to Conduit’s, and keep all of the Google revenue for yourself.
The only “toolbar” I need is the default Google search box that has been provided within Firefox for ages.
Why the sudden push for toolbars? ChaCha went toolbar crazy 2 days ago - now this.
In what way is this better (for a marketer) than the good old e-mail list?
I just built a Conduit toolbar and I love it. The radio component is really cool, my users will love it. Thanks for turning me onto this one!!!
I have used ToolbarStudio http://www.toolbarstudio.com which is far better than Conduit. It is a lot more customisable and there is no revenue sharing proposition.
These seem to hated over on Mozilla’s forums:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/.....p?t=465643
http://forums.mozillazine.org/.....p?t=500994
I wish they could sort out their differences as I love the idea of community toolbars but am reluctant to create and recommend something others call spyware.
I think there’s a great deal of snobbery from some in the Firefox community believing that that extensions should only be allowed to be done by people who can build them from scratch. I also would like to see Conduit either collecting less data even if it means some functionality is lost
How do these companies get these domain names? That’s seriously the only thing I want to know. How much did Microsoft pay for Live.com? How much did conduit pay for conduit.com? That’s all I want to know.
@Kallol
For the target group - the revenue sharing proposition is the plus of Conduit. The way you state “and there is no revenue sharing proposition” makes it seem as if that’s a plus.
Unless of course, ToolbarStudio gives you 100% of the profit…
Good for them. When Israel and California get together–good things happen.
I think I saw that in a Target commercial.
In a lot of ways, MobileOX.com offers the same functionality … including a “customized domain name.”
The main difference is that users are able to decide which sites they want included in their “toolbar,” and in which order.
This overcomes the “Multiple Toolbar Problem” … where an individual wants the offerings in 3 or 4 toolbars, but does not want to download and install 3 or 4 toolbars.
Moreover, once created, an individual’s MobileOX page is “Portable,” on any computer, on any browser, anywhere in the world. (Oh, and there is absolutely nothing to install either.)
“Toolbars are useful for b2b purposes, pointless for b2c” … make sense … Conduit’s been great for us. Simple way to add direct links in the browser to parts of EchoSign that are important to power users. Not a huge time saver over just going to the site, but enough the usage is material. Took about 10 minutes to create it.
Toolbar Studio and others let you take 100% of the profit, last time I checked Conduit was sharing less than 10%, and even that small amount very begrudgingly.
Conduit is a real revolutionary concept. it’s a mater of time until it becomes Google…
Glad to see they are getting noticed! We looked around and picked Conduit since there was nothing out there even close. Now that they are offering Google search, our user experience will be unmatched. For us the fact that we didnt need to invest resources, coding time, maintenance, or hard dollars into it was key.
Definitely good news for Israelis Startup. Being Israeli based, im proud.
Michael,
You should consider either featuring another white-label toolbar suite manufacturer, Montreal, QC-based Visicom Media, either in a new post or as an addendum to this post. Several people have pointed out Toolbar Studio as well. There are clearly other players in this niche space and, since TechCrunch posts are normally very well rounded and written, it seems only fair to point out who Conduit’s competitors are.
In fact, Visicom Media is one of, if not the, oldest player in this space (to the best of my knowledge). They also produce bucketloads of other free and paid software products. They first came to my attention several years ago when it was revealed they were the people producing Netscape’s toolbar.
Cheers,
Doug
Full Disclosure: I am not affiliated with, or an investor in, Visicom Media or any company period. I have no investments in any privately-held or publicly-traded company.
Great product.
We’ve been providing out customers with cmmunity toolbars for many purposes and they were all a success. The service Conduit provided us is worth mentioning, it seems like they were just waiting for our inquiries since the response was received within hours!
Keep up the good work Conduiters!
Virtuoso
Seems like a VERY interesting solution.
I’ve been reading around their website and found some very interesting facts:
1. The platform they provide is compatible with all major browsers.
2. The toolbar you create is branded under your own name (with your own Logo etc.).
3. Publishers can register for the rev-share program, which makes them the ONLY solution that enables use Google via a toolbar…
4. It took me less than 2 minutes to create a fully-functional toolbar!
AMAZING!
>
Excellent product! - We just launched a Conduit toolbar last month with an excellent response from our users. it really is quite amazing how easy the toolbar was to develop.
How many toolbars can one really put up with? They can only be so specialized.
Thumbs up to DynamicToolbar.com instead - they have excellent tech - and you own the toolbar. I’m not sure why any major publisher would give away so much revenue to another company (read: Conduit), when they could have it all themselves. I’m not affiliated with anyone there, but I am surprised nobody has made mention of them in this discussion.
Was having a lot of fun playing around with this product. Seems great. Shame they are having major problems with their server & I keep losing my changes. Must be all the Techcrunch readers checking it out!
I agree with the two Alex’s above - how many toolbars with the same functionality on the same browser can we have - ever tried turning off all the popup blockers so you can see a popup you actually want?
I’m a fan of the work being done by the guys over at Touchstone - http://www.touchstonelive.com - Broadcast messages to a community minus the multi-toolbar mayhem
As a user of a Conduit toolbar I can say that this toolbar has all I need. Search in Google, Radio player where I can hear my fav stations and the Email Notifier off course where I can get notified on my Gmails Hotmails and Yahoo mails. I don’t need more toolbars.
Greate product, free, fantastic for publishers that wnat to keep in touch more closlly with there users.
Good job
Before I created my toolbar empire, I checked and compared about 10 different products of toolbar authoring software. I was eager to make money online - and wanted to be confident about the right toolbar provider. After reviewing the pros and cons of each, I finally voted for the Conduit toolbar building platform. Which enables you to take the best content available online including radio stations’ feeds, RSS feeds streaming media content, search engines and more and put them in a dynamic toolbar that sits on your customers’ browser. The toolbar gives you more “face-time”, meaning you enjoy visibility because you’re right in front of the user whenever he’s online. Forget everything you’ve ever learnt about niche-sites, landing pages and mini sites… Your affiliate links will sit in front of your users’ eyes 24/7, whenever he’s online, get it? It’s genial!
http://www.make-money-toolbar.com
Speaking from the user pint of view - toolbars have changed the way that people browse and the potential is unlimited. you can use them for CRM, for ads, multimedia and almost everything as an independent application.
This is only the beginning of a new era in which toolbars will rule the earth!
MLB and Greenpeace got their toolbars with these guys so they can’t be bad can they?
I think Conduit could be really useful for less tech-savvy users who need to perform certain tasks quite frequently just because they belong to a certain community.
Will certainly give this a try. Thanks for the update.
@Michael Wales
I have customised ToolbarStudio for our use and it works really well. It is very customisable, so it is possible to put a search box there and monetize any ads associated with search results.
Conduit.com - simply the best toolbars in the web!
…it took me 15 min to create a toolbar a few months ago, and 5 minutes 2 weeks ago using their new wizard.
I published a toolbar with the conduit platform that’s specializing in Jazz music, and i can only say good things about conduit.
1. The building interface is smooth and easy.
2. The features are stables, and my users love them, specially the web radio.
3. I always get the support, when I’m asking them for questions.
4. My community keeps on growing
currently I get one or two mails from people that use my toolbar every day, at there work or at home, and they are more then happy with it.
I Cant ask for more
yep, conduit can kiss mozilla goodbye, it’s not allowed there anymore. no more “guy levy toolbar empire” folks. oh well, there’s other fish in the ocean, eh? heh heh…
revenue sharing or not, the toolbar works great for me and my community!
Conduit is great, and you must try it before to talk for nothing…
1. The toolbar works like crazy.
2. It’s simple to build a bar.
3. You don’t need experience or knowledge.
4. You can make money.
Personally, I have built a toolbar on which you get 147+ software at the touch of a button (free of charge).
Yes, it is 100% true. I have built a software toolbar thanks to Conduit. No-one can tell me that it is a scam company. They are great, they are allowing me to EXPAND my business with ease. They exist!
This is true as my software toolbar.
Why not to try a toolbar before posting?
It’s too easy to send blatant words while you have not tried something.
Are you kidding?
Try something before to talk. Try my toolbar, try Conduit. Many people put their souls and their blood in their toolbar. Belive me…
Bye (and reflect on what you say!).
You don’t need to be a computer engineer or a genius to build a professional toolbar!!!
I find Conduit platform the best way and the easy one to get to my webusers. It is so simple to build pro toolbar and there is no one that have all those options as they do in there platform.
you have to try it, you gonna like it!
http://www.md-radio.com
This Conduit toolbar as well as many others are just a hype, they bring nothing new, it’s just one more annoying toolbar.
As you can see by some of the replies above, this tool targets the newbies which in a way is good but also VERY bad, since now you started to see a proliferation of useless toolbars, and it’s true, if you look at the majority of them, they are nothing but a collection of links to some crummy site or a useless script, no wonder they got rejected from Mozilla and C-NET.
I have to mention that I’ve also seen very few GOOD toolbars, I can count them with only one hand, but I imagine, not many people would use them because they don’t contain a WEATHER, EMAIL CHECKER, POPUP BLOCKER and oh please! a RADIO and a CHAT room, I mean, how many toolbars you need CONTAINING THE SAME GENERIC OPTIONS?, and if you believe that you can make money, oh yeah sure, maybe 1 or 2 people if they have the traffic, but not for the rest of them.
Now Conduit had partnered with Google (Oh boy!) which means, is just matter of time for Conduit users to start getting Google ads as mandatory parts of the toolbar, they kind of started by “integrating” the search, very soon Conduit toolbars will be a Google’s and case closed.
There are other toolbar suites or studios or whatever you want to call them, and the “free” ones like Conduit’s have some kind of ad somewhere, and why not? there’s nothing free in this world, very soon, the same will happen to this “revolutionary” toolbar.
Enjoy your toolbars (Ugh!)
I published a PDA-Download toolbar with the conduit platform that’s specializing in PDA features. The toolbar provides comfortable use for the general public and PDA users in particular. PDA-Download toolbar contains links to the sites on subject, RSS Feeds and wide search in net, it allows listening to on-line music and radio stations and more tools and attractive information.
The Toolbar turned to be popular all over the world and has thousands of users, which are more then happy.
http://www.pda-download.net
You know what’s funny here? *most* of the positive or highly positive comments here come from a group of Israelis, all stupid enough to use their Hebrew names. Now let’s see…. who might they be? I’ll tell you, conduit friends, employees and colleagues! woohoo!
Posters so far who are either Israelis by name or by residence:
Ilya Leynzon, Gabriel L, “Eyal”, “Yotam”, “Eli M”, “Guy Levy”, “Ronen Chen”, “UDster”, “Adam benayoun”, “Jacob levy”… and these are just the ones that are EXTREMELY obvious. Grow up, people.
I have to agree with some of the posters above, Conduit toolbars are annoying (and all toolbars in general), I use to have a toolbar but not anymore, besides, like soapbox joe said, there are a lot of toolbars that are full of nothing and very crappy, and if you browse Conduit forums, you’ll see that there’s always some newbie posting a link to a javascript and saying “this is a fantastic feature” please, how ridiculous is that. Besides, toolbars always track what you do, and if someone says the contrary, is just a lie.