A lot of attention will be on Philadelphia today for Major League Soccer’s draft day. You can find much of the action at the MLS site. Events like this bring fans together with hope and anticipation for the coming season.

And in the midst of the hype, I’m going to make a shameless plug for browser themes Brand Thunder created for each of the MLS teams. We’ve had great success with our product across sports leagues, and fortunate enough to engage the MLS at the league level so each of their teams benefited.

If you’re a fan, go to Brand Thunder’s Gallery and click on Sports, scroll down to Soccer and choose your favorite team. You’ll be treated to world-class designs and the best of the team’s content right in the browser. And that offers you style and substance in addition to a completely new browser experience.

Enjoy the theme, the day and good luck to all the teams and players.

Our custom browser experiences prove valuable because they are engaging. The browser is the most used application on the computer. You wrap that in branding, images, content and functionality and you’ve got a pretty compelling product. You put that in the hands of your loyal audience and you’ve got a powerful engagement tool that’s going to strengthen that connection with the end user.

I don’t see engagement as the problem. For advertisers, though, I can see the problem being where the engagement label is applied. If your user is engaged with a web site, the ads only chance is to interrupt that experience which probably isn’t going to get the response you want (though there are billions of dancing mortgage ads that will argue this point with me).

When engagement is within the site, if you’re not a natural part of the site, your value declines. AOL Instant Messenger never really cracked the ad mystery because the high volume of ads and a user’s intense focus on the application. Engagement with the product is through the roof, but with the ads is horrendous. Brand marketers found their integration points however with avatars and skins and you saw users respond.

To claim engagement isn’t valuable to the advertiser or is overhyped, to me, misses the mark. An advertisers interaction with its end user is incredibly valuable, and that’s engagement. Just don’t expect it when their attention is firmly somewhere else.

Christmas kicked off what’s been a full year of capturing the major holidays in our Booms! and they’ve been exceptionally popular. If you’ve not seen the Thanksgiving Boom!, check out our Gallery and click the Holiday link. It’s festive and fun, and it’ll be a nice placeholder until you download our upcoming Christmas Boom!.

From a business growth standpoint, Christmas provided a whole new avenue to explore outside of our focus on branded browsers. Great brands have solid followings and a lot of affinity marketing products are built on those relationships. But if you’re that business in the middle providing a service to the brand and to their end user, it makes sense for you to look at other outlets for your creativity and potential markets that are under served.

Our holiday efforts got our custom browser experiences into a lot of new hands. It’s been an effective and simple method to expand our product and help our business. So, in a few weeks, I know one additional thing I’ll be thankful for.

“Our business is at the point of growing exponentially,” said Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder. “As we look to scale the business, we needed the wealth of knowledge and resources these gentlemen bring. We think their contribution will be invaluable to Brand Thunder’s business as they each bring a expertise in areas critical to our ongoing success.”

Bob Christopher brings leadership and operational experience in building successful technology companies with international focus. Bob recently served as CEO of UGOBE where he raised $24 million to launch the first consumer lifestyle robot company. Bob’s experience includes President of the investment forum InnerCircle 1,and Chief Strategist and President for Nikotel, a worldwide VoIP company.

John Dixon offers incredible depth of knowledge about online businesses and management. He recently served as Vice President of Business Development & Strategic Alliances at AOL and was instrumental in developing partnerships across industries including PC Manufacturers, sports, search providers and content creators. John’s experience includes marketing and brand management for H. J. Heinz Company.

Mark Harris, a 14-year veteran with Microsoft, brings a discipline for technology serving its consumer. Mark led the releases for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 R2. He currently works with large healthcare accounts in central and northeast Ohio as a Technology Strategist.

Brand Thunder’s browser Booms! wrap the user’s web browser in a graphically-rich experience with integrated content and functionality from their favorite sports team, entertainment brand, publication or Internet site. The browser becomes a valuable connection between brand and its community delivering continuous engagement and increased loyalty.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates custom-browser experiences for major brands. Brands enjoy a more persistent connection to their Internet consumer through the custom browser Boom!, which increases website visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The custom browser Booms! feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202
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Hockey teams seem to be the innovators in the interactive marketing space, especially if the team’s name is the Capitals. At least, that’s been our experience to date.

One of Brand Thunder’s first clients was the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals. Now, we’re first again with the Capitals. This time it’s the Elite Ice Hockey League’s Edinburgh Capitals in Scotland. It’s the first entry we’ve had into the sports marketing arena within the UK. You can read the details here or see the product here.

The sports industry has been the most aggressive in adopting our product. That seems natural as they’re businesses are dependent on the ongoing and strong relationship with their existing fan base. They are not solely focused on the trial or new user that so many marketers pursue. Reaching and appealing to new audiences is important, but it’s never at the expense of that vital core.

We’re thrilled to count the Capitals and their fans among our users. Again.

From distinctive looks to the latest videos and Tweets in the sidebars, each Boom! packs a lot into a redefined browser experience. The built-in feed reader will keep users up-to-speed on the latest news and features appearing on the sites. Plus, the toolbar buttons get users back to the most popular areas of COEDMagazine.com and CollegeCandy.com fast.

“COED Media Group captures the fun of the college lifestyle and puts it into our websites everyday,” said Robert Bardunias, President of CMG LLC. “Now, we’ve taken the best and hottest and put it into Brand Thunder Booms! so our fans enjoy it regardless of the site they are on.”

“COED Magazine and College Candy are ideal sites to offer a custom browser experience,” said Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder. “The content is highly visual and headlines are enticing, so they integrate well into the browser and also act as an irresistible invitation to click back to the sites.”

Brand Thunder’s browser Booms! are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Booms!.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates custom-browser experiences. Brands enjoy a more persistent connection to their Internet consumer through the custom browser Boom!, which increases website visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The custom browser Booms! feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

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Today, Laurie Sullivan over at MediaPost’s Online Media Daily discusses how Google is educating the world about Chrome. It’s a small step in a much bigger effort.

Whatbrowser.org is a simple site defining the most important application on the computer. It generously makes the major browsers available from the site, and has links to tests that I’m not sure really further the knowledge of browsers.

This is all nice, but the rest of the story is the overall push that Chrome is making to gain market share. Google is proceeding in a systematic way as hey are also buying the default placement on PC-OEM machines and offering customization via themes.

Switching is a fairly high barrier, so the default placement on the PC-OEMs will provide a big lift for Chrome. Customization has proven to be another tool that overcomes satisfaction with the norm. We’ve seen Firefox penetration double on our partner sites after they’ve launched a branded browser Boom!. That’s despite the requirement of going off to Mozilla to download Firefox first.

Given these steps, is Brand Thunder releasing a Chrome Boom!? Not yet. For a small company, efforts have to be focused. That focus has been on refining the custom browser experience on Firefox and extending the product to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (see our IE beta story here). The market share of Chrome doesn’t warrant our full attention.

Does this put Chrome on the product road map? You bet. Google is taking the necessary steps to ensure Chrome has a meaningful presence, and that has ensured companies like ours are moving from interest to action.

Today, Brand Thunder announced the beta launch of the Internet Explorer Boom!. This is not just a huge milestone in our ability to serve our clients and end users, it’s another step toward mitigating risk in our whole business. Here are a few thoughts on single dependency and how it shaped getting us to this point.

Eco-systems and Platforms

When we started building on Firefox, addons.mozilla.org (AMO) offered an ideal proving ground for concept and technology. It offered an aggregated audience predisposed to enhancing their browsing experience with add-ons. Other companies built their businesses here as well (StumbleUpon, Clipmarks, Delicious). Facebook is that environment for social applications.

Any time you’re beholden to a single entity, there’s the risk for a single point of failure should something in that relationship change. Mozilla being open source and community driven isn’t like other organizations, but it’s still serves a segment of the Internet population. To meet the needs of our clients, we need to serve as wide an audience as possible and that service is on other browser platforms.

Channels to Market

AMO is a tremendous help in getting our product to end users, but it’s not our only source of distribution. Since we built custom browsers for major brands, we had the advantage of distributing through their sites and their fan sites as well. For successful social applications, they look to Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and leverage their Viral Loop. Other browser extensions build out to IE, Safari, Opera, Chrome and so on.

We weren’t limited to a single channel, but now we extend that even further through access to IEAddons.com and sites devoted to Windows downloads. And since we’re unique the visual immersion we bring to the browser experience, there’s an opportunity to satisfy and under-served market.

The Internet Explorer Highlights

So, we’ve improved our position in a couple key areas for our business and we’re thrilled about that. But, here’s why we think our clients and end users will be excited as well.

The story about how a little download can add a lot of Boom! to a browser just became a whole lot bigger.

COLUMBUS, OH — September 29, 2009– Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the custom browser specialists, announced today beta group availability to test the most visually immersive add-on available for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Fans of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks (http://canucks.nhl.com/club/page.htm?id=48312) or Washington Capitals (http://capitals.nhl.com/browser) can request access to private beta groups and their opportunity to experience Brand Thunder’s Boom! beyond Firefox.

Brand Thunder creates persistent connections between major brands and their online consumers via the Internet browser. Each browser Boom! delivers a visual takeover of the browser, an integrated toolbar for content and functionality, plus the multimedia sidebar for videos, photos and more. Previously, the Boom! was only available to users of the Firefox browser. With the addition of Internet Explorer, 90% of the browser market will have access to a more custom and personalized Internet experience.

“The customization capabilities we’re adding to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are a pretty big step forward for the users of the IE browser,” said Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder. “And it’s a huge win for our clients who want it as simple as possible to give their fans a stunning web browser.”

Brand Thunder’s browser Booms! are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Booms!.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates custom-browser experiences. Brands enjoy a more persistent connection to their Internet consumer through the custom browser Boom!, which increases website visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The custom browser Booms! feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-304-1316

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We talk a lot about the power of a browser in staying connected to your consumer and fan base. It should come as no surprise that a company able to define the standard of using social media to support its members would gravitate toward offering a Brand Thunder Boom! to its users as well. So, while we might claim a lack of surprise, there’s no lack of joy about working with Comcast.

We’re building a browser experience that helps Comcast subscribers find and access the breadth of content and functionality available from Comcast.net. While the product is still a few weeks away, we’re excited by the prospects of bringing the Boom! to a new market. Comcast is one of a handful of companies offering a fusion of entertainment, information and communication. We’re looking forward to demonstrating how the browser is an effective gateway to what they offer and what the end user needs.