Anti-widget

There's nothing so inoccuous as Valleywag can't take against it for an hour or so. So they turn to widgets with HYPEBUSTING: Against widgets. Well, it's not a bad article and quite illuminating, even if totally wrong headed. A violation of blog principles, I ask you. What, like the ones Luther nailed to the church door, eh?

Against widgets

There's nothing intrinsically pernicious about widgets, the little web gizmos that liven up personal blogs and Myspace pages, subject of a write-up in today's New York Times. But the level of enthusiasm for these modest add-ons -- services such as Blinkyou and Coolmyspacecomments which can provide photo galleries or other baubles to otherwise basic web pages -- is entirely out of proportion to their importance. Here are five reasons why.

1. A violation of blog principles. Google's focus on the search box was a refreshing antidote to confusing portal pages such as Yahoo's. Similarly, the blog represented a pared-down way of reading news: the most recent item at the top; scan down the page; stop when an old headline appears. Widget clutter is not simply distracting to readers; it compromises the original appeal of the blog format.

2. A sluggish page is a bad page. A page only loads as fast as the slowest widget. All those annoyingly flickering messages in the status bar of the browser -- Read, Connecting to, Waiting for. I blame widgets. Fred Wilson's blog is a laboratory for these web modules: the venture capitalist's site is said by Alexa to be among the slowest on the web, with a load time of 11 seconds.

3. Statistics. Widgets provide yet another way for web startups to lie, to others and themselves, about their statistics. A site that cannot draw an audience instead rides on the back of blogs, by packaging a service such as a photo slideshow and promoting it on networks such as Myspace. Fine, except, at best, each widget has a small percentage of the real estate on a page. And widget makers, in their stats, usually pretend that a passing glimpse of their tiny zone on the page represents the undivided attention of a measurable visitor. Pah.

4. Business model. Finally, enthusiasm for widgets is contributing to unhealthy internet hype. Some companies, such as Imagelooop, are raising money specifically to develop tools for Myspace users. Let's get something straight here. A widget is an affiliate marketing program, no more, no less; the maker is entirely dependent on the tolerance of the page's owner or a network such as Myspace. Any widget maker that tries to sneak in their own advertising -- and most of them entertain such fantasies -- will be swiftly slapped down.

5. Hype. In short, the evangelists -- Newsweek, ridiculously asked whether 2007 would be the year of the widget -- would do well to remember the modest meaning of the word. Not business, not even product, but widget. "A small device, esp. one whose name is not known or cannot be recalled." That sounds about right.

Comments

[bunnyhero]

"And widget makers, in their stats, usually pretend that a passing glimpse of their tiny zone on the page represents the undivided attention of a measurable visitor."

is that true? as a widget maker, i certainly don't do that myself. my widgets are served from different servers than my main website, and i don't count those in my stats at all.

[Ivan]

Jeremy,
Good piece on your blog.
I'd go further on the Valleywag position - 'Widget clutter is not simply distracting to readers; it compromises the original appeal of the blog format.'

So wrong. Widgets do not distract from the content - they are the content.

[jeremy liew]

wrong headed is right. Slamming widgets because they distract from the content when put in blogs is like slamming TVs because they distract from driving when put in cars. But TVs belong in the home. And widgets belong in social networks.

I posted on this on the Lightspeed blog. Click on my name in this comment if you'd like to see more.

[myspacemaniac]

I still love all these myspace tools.