donloeb.com

nice article article today in the nytimes on widgets…while it’s missing some things, it’s a good overview of widgetmania…

i actually think that widgets should be more broadly defined to include almost any external code/services that can be embedded on a web page, put on a homepage (live.com, google ig, netvibes, etc.), or downloaded to a desktop (apple, yahoo, google, springwidget, microsoft, adobe, etc)…

btw, on my site right now, i have the following “widgets”

- flickr photos on the top of the page
- headlines from my “yahoo my web” bookmarks (via feedburner’s buzzboost service)
- tag cloud from delicious
- feedburner feedflare mini-widgets at the bottom of every post (digg this, save this, etc.)
- mybloglog recent reader list
- email capture form for rss-to-email subscriptions (powered by feedburner)
- yahoo publisher network, adsense, and feedburner ads (they’re widgets of some sort)

and, i’m going to add a few more…likely a “most popular posts” widget and an animated gif sort of like this one:

i’ll write more about this later, but in general, widgets can be put into the following buckets:

* “building block” widgets that enhance sites in some way (flickr, tag clouds, bookmarks etc.)

* viral widgets that help define identity - i.,e help publishers with self-expression (sports teams, authors, etc.)

* e-commerce / affiliate products that generate revenue and can be embedded or ad-served…

* promotional widgets used to cross-post content on various sites including social networks, etc.

* and, finally “enhanced” rss widgets that provide visually interesting or functionally useful modules for homepages and desktops. something that goes beyond just traditional rss display.

obviously, at feedburner we’re very focused on how we can help publishers create widgets and analyze usage across the web…we’re close to providing a complete analytics package -> one that helps publishers understand how people use content on their site, in their feed, and across the web via widgets (of all forms - javascript, gifs, flash, etc)….and, more importantly, how different populations use all of them over time.

anyways…i have a lot of thoughts on this space and will share more pretty soon.

Tags: rss, yahoo, feedburner, google, microsoft, feedflare, my yahoo, widgets, myspace, FIM, springwidgets, headline animator |