Flypaper: flash presentations for the rest of us

Last week I took a peek at the unfortunately named Flypaper Pro, a product that allows the creation of high quality Flash content but without all the programming skills that are normally associated with this kind of thing. I say unfortunately named because for me, it has connotations of fly splattered bits of sticky paper hanging from various rooms when I lived in the French countryside. For the company it's about the idea of creating 'stories that stick.'

Building a story is easy. Using a drag and drop interface, select royalty free or own created images from Flickr, Google Images and Yahoo Images, blend in YouTube content, add in contact forms and you're pretty much done. But that's not where the power lays. Tracking campaigns (as an example) is critical for marketers wishing to discover the people who are not only grazing content but exhibiting behavior that suggests they may be ready to buy. Flypaper includes a set of comprehensive analytics that allows marketers to get an understanding about the things people find most interesting.

The company sees many different uses for the service beyond marketing such as in training and education. At the moment, they are targeting pharmaceutical, financial services and healthcare markets as those most likely to benefit from this way of working. Co-founder Don Pierson said: "Flypaper puts easy to use tooks into the front line people's hands so that they're not reliant on programmers, with all the latency issues that implies."

As a way of helping companies get off the ground, Flypaper comes with pre-programmed templates. In the later to be released enterprise version, the company will integrate the service to Microsoft CRM and Salesforce.com.

Co-founder Pat Sullivan (he of ACT! and SalesLogix fame) added: "This will not necessarily put Flash programmers out of work. Far from it. Instead it does provide the Flash developer with a platform for re-use. It solves a lot of the maintenance problems associated with Flash content and allows us to develop a network of content producers who can help smaller businesses develop quality, creative content."

Flypaper is available at $195 per user per annum.