Those of us that actively use widgets have a problem. There are too many freaking widgets! I mean seriously, you can only cram so many widgets into your posts, sidebars, and profile pages.
This problem is only going to get worse as more services are made available a la carte on the desktop, web, and mobile as widgets. So what's the solution? Widget management tools. Specifically, we need tools to:
1. Import widgets from 3rd party sites
2. Organize widgets into sets
3. Publish widgets, or widget sets, to internal and external platforms
The only company that I have seen who is directly attacking this problem is Snipperoo. That being said, there are several folks attacking this problem from different angles. Most notably, start page platforms like Google enable the organization of widgets published through their gallery.
This space is only going to get more heated. Ultimately, some derivative of digital lifestyle aggregators with widget management capabilities will serve as the central point of management for web services - displacing traditional web portals as the de facto gateways to the web.
technorati tags: aggregator, widgets, webservices, web2.0
You may have noticed that start pages are swiftly becoming full widget management systems. Pageflakes recently led the charge on this front, enabling users to export widgets to sites outside of their domain. In our post discussing this move, we predicted that this feature would swiftly become a standard in the start page space:
"Undoubtedly, this capability will become the norm as this space matures. Although this was pinned as just another feature release, the move should not be taken lightly. It has massive implications for the future of content aggregation platforms. Data and services are not meant to be bound to a single destination - they are meant to be free."
Well it looks like this theory might not be too off base. Another start page platform has taken the plunge. The folks from Goowy Media have updated the YourMinis platform to enable users to export their kewl Flash modules.
What is really great about their implementation is that the modules behave differently outside of the YourMinis environment. In the world of YourMinis, the widget is editable. You can change the colors, feeds, and other settings as applicable. However, once the widget it is exported, it retains configuration settings - only exposing viral capabilities to the visitors of the site it resides upon. What is even more rad is that, since these modules are created in Flash, they work on MySpace!
The folks at YourMinis are innovating at light speed. Not only have they managed to crank out an absolutely sexy user experience, but they are also pushing the limits on new paradigms in web service management. I wonder what Tariq and Freddy have up their sleeves for Netvibes. Knowing that crew, it is bound to be something good.
Congrats to Gary and the rest of the team for a job well-done. Really looking forward to more cool stuff in this space! Later, fan-boys.
technorati tags: yourminis, pageflakes, netvibes, widgets, startpage
Ok, so this is definitely late. But better, late then never I say...
Congrats to my buddy Eric Marcoullier on the acquisition of his company, MyBlogLog, by Yahoo. He and his team have managed to transform a blog tracking service into one of the most differentiated, high-growth, social networks on the web. As some of you might know, I am a big fan of the MyBlogLog service. Here is an excerpt from a post I did on my old blog Convergence:
MyBlogLog gives each blogger a "space" that shows blogs he/she authors, other communities they are following, and a place for folks to leave general comments. They also offer cool widgets to enhance your blog with social functionality. In short, MyBlogLog communities gives blog-geeks the cool community features offered by MySpace, without forcing them to give up their right to publish the way they want.
Check out the full post here. As an aside, check out Rob's post on how their widgets have helped drive their growth. Via his blog:
MyBlogLog is absolutely growing like mad. Eric posts the statistics on MyBlogLog at their blog:
First the major milestones:
* We hit 40K registered sites today
* We served a million Reader Rolls on Monday
* We’ve had consecutive 50M work weeks for pages tracked (that’s 2.5B pages tracked per year if we don’t grow another bit [and don’t track anything on weekends])
It was a great opportunity to compare against Scott’s stats post from two weeks ago and see the trends. I love the continued adoption of the Reader Roll widget:
* Oct 30: 1,325 Sites with Reader Rolls
* Nov 28: 2,398 Sites with Reader Rolls
* Dec 13: 3,658 Sites with Reader Rolls
January 12, 2007 at 10:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
There has been growing excitement in the marketing community about using widgets as advertisements. My friend Greg Verdino from Digitas has been preaching the concept of using widgets as a high engagement marketing vehicle for quite some time. Well it looks like it is finally happening.
According to Mashable, Bebo is officially launching advertising widgets. Some might balk at the idea of ad widgets, but would it really be that bad? Online advertising has a bad reputation because it is often annoying. However, if an advertisement is relevant it is simply another bit of content, right?
For instance, Universal Pictures is releasing the film Smokin' Aces on Jan 26th. This movie has a pretty bad ass cast and promises to be pretty entertaining. As it happens, Universal has created a snaggable movie trailer with Clearspring to promote the movie. Is it that unbelievable that folks might post a trailer widget to their friend's MySpace comments? Or that movie fanatics would use the trailer for in blog posts they write reviewing the flick?
I think it will take some time for the right models to work themselves out, but with all of the activity mounting this year is promising to shake up the world of online advertising.
technorati tags: widgets, advertising, engagement, digitas, bebo
Ok, so this is definitely late. But better, late then never I say...
Congrats to my buddy Eric Marcoullier on the acquisition of his company, MyBlogLog, by Yahoo. He and his team have managed to transform a blog tracking service into one of the most differentiated, high-growth, social networks on the web. As some of you might know, I am a big fan of the MyBlogLog service. Here is an excerpt from a post I did on my old blog Convergence:
