Snipperoo

Now they know how many widgets it takes to fill the Albert Hall

Digit Online.

Pageflakes, which lets communities of users create personalized Internet home pages, next month plans to begin offering a directory of 10,000 "widgets," or small, single-purpose applications that can be used to further customize personal pages.

Random House - nice widget!

Hot on the heels of HarperCollins comes Random House with an even nicer widget.

The ability to search and read actual pages from all of these books is just a click away. Have a favorite book? Then search for your favorite character, sample some pages, buy it, or add it to your own web site!

You can actually browse the book within the widget - though it's too small to read. Clicking on the widget opens a much larger version. The widget carries code to get a copy and, the first time I've seen it done like this, allows you to choose a large or small version, which seems like a good idea, but doesn't really pan out how you expect it to:

The little one is fine.
The big one is a monster!

With thanks to Mashable!

How many Gadgets?

Google has put - with caveats - the number of  uses for each Gadget on the Gadget page. As each Gadget can be used on a web page, they are also widgets! There are some seriously big numbers in there - more proof of the rampant success of the widgetsphere.

Google Code - Updates: The Value of Google Gadgets.

In order to promote a more transparent and open ecosystem for gadget developers, we have introduced a new feature in the Gadgets For Your Webpage directory detailing the approximate number of gadget views each gadget receives per week. We expect that gadget developers (and potential gadget developers!) will be able to use this information to better understand the reach of their gadgets. A quick check will show that hundreds of gadgets are getting tens of thousands of pageviews each week -- and many are even getting millions.

And now, the technical stuff: These numbers are approximations, representing the number of times each gadget is rendered across all places Google Gadgets can be viewed. The pageview count is aggregated weekly to smooth out the normal daily fluctuations and we have filtered out automatic page refreshes. Individual gadget authors who want to know more specific information about their gadget's traffic should make use of the Google Analytics library.

Brady Forrest at O'Reilly Radar has done a quick survey of numbers:

It's interesting to see what scale these pageviews operate at. Here's a survey of the views for gadgets:

• Google Map - 4,861,113
• PacMan v2.0 - 8,114,344
• DIGG - 3,228,599
• My IP - 1,063,244
• Wikipedia - 27,314,972
• Countdown - 2,076,028
• Online Second Life Friends - 1,396
• Free Sudoku Puzzles - 4,450,349
• Memory Game - 647,151

 

Widgets Don’t Age Well

Liz Gannes says Widgets Don’t Age Well but surely the question should be 'Can widgets age well?'. And the concenus round here seems to be that they can and they could and they should. Anything less is just shoddy widgetizing.

How far can you push a widget? YouTube video embeds, quite possibly the most successful widgets of all time, are seriously failing these days. Click on most any embedded clip, it seems, and you’ll get a “This video is no longer available” warning. Perhaps this is a fatal flaw of widgets; maybe they are best used for delivery of information that is time-sensitive and forgettable, like the weather or the stocks.

First Adget Spotted?

Amit notices what might be the first ad/widget (adget) Google Tests Adsense Gadgets - YouTube Player Embedded in Adsense Ads
What is it? Not sure, time will tell.

Just spotted (here) a new kind of interactive Google Adsense Unit that shows text as well as YouTube Videos embedded inside a Flash Widget. [The ad is for Google GMail]

Though I did not click the ad, the HTML source of the Adsense iFrame does reveal lot of interesting information about this Adsense Ad:

� The Adsense gadget has an embedded Youtube player that serves the four videos of GMail Theater Ads directly from Youtube.

� The YouTube player is 250x200 pixels while the Adsense Ad size is 300x250 pixels.

� The Adsense Flash widget is actually served by Lab Pixies, a company that also creates gadgets or widgets for personalized pages like PageFlakes, Google Personalized Homepage and Microsoft Live.com.

Uneasy Truce

Andrew Chen writing on Widgets and their uneasy truce with blogging platforms

Ultimately, the blogging platform has all the control in the relationship, and they are incented to act in two ways:

1) First, let any widget company start and flourish
2) Once it gets popular enough, either control it and charge it a toll, or block it and replicate in-house

Sound familiar? Well, Microsoft essentially did this to wrest control of Windows and the major cash cow products from other companies over time.

Product progression and the widget

Nisan Gabbay writes on startups in his Startup Review blog. This from MyBlogLog Case Study: Product progression and the widget

MyBlogLog is another company whose success in acquiring users came about through widget marketing. Other examples include YouTube, RockYou, and Slide. I think that we will continue to see more companies have success with widgets, although the bar for user attention will continue to climb. So what are some keys to getting widgets to produce results? For one, the widget needs to benefit the end user with a clear value prop. I think that many of the failed widget plays out there don’t provide enough value to the end user. Afterall, the user is trading real estate on their site to put up the widget, so as a widget provider you are not only competing with your direct competitors but also with all other widget providers and advertising options vying for that user’s attention.

Ning and Snipperoo

Mike Arrington et al celebrate the relaunch of Ning. I love Ning and made a (failed) mashup last year (London WiFi).

I have to hand it to Ning - it took them well over a year after their initial beta launch to fulfill their initial promise of allowing “anyone” to create social applications, but they’ve done it. Ning relaunches tonight with new functionality and an interface that allows even the most novice of web users to create their own highly customized social network in moments.

After seeing a demo earlier this afternoon, I’m now willing to offer a full mea culpa. The new Ning is an impressive and useful service.

The New Ning

Ning can be used to create a fully functional and customized social network in minutes (click on image to right for larger view).

The best thing about it? You can add the Snipperoo widget to your site and thus put any widgets you want on your social network. I've bashed together a quick Brighton Mashup site and put a Snipperoo panel on it.

Universality of the web widget

Niall Kennedy, widgetmaster of this parish, has written up what amounts to a guide to the sate of play with widget platforms in  Universality of the web widget.
His conclusions:

A universal widget might lose out on advertising opportunities available in each widget platform's gallery. Your widget may not be listed in the Apple Dashboard gallery, the Google Gadgets directory, Windows Live Gadgets Gallery, etc. Users of each platform typically are directed to these directories to find new pieces of content and it's a free form of advertising for your widget and your brand.

He doesn't mention Clearspring or SpringWidgets here - though Clearspring may be a producing what will be the neutral widget platforms and SpringWidgets, although allied to MySpace, could also be looked at as a neutral widget platform. It's a very important issue. As Kennedy points out, using a platform that encompasses a widget destination can be seen as a limiting move. For example, if you build a Netvibes widget using their API, where does this leave you when you come to submit to Google Gadgets or a Yahoo environment? The answer isn't clear at this stage, but we can take a guess at what it might be. On the other hand, building and rebuilding widgets for every different platform or environment is a game that only the widget building agencies will want to be involved in. If you're being paid by the hour it may be attractive, but it's hardly efficient to have a dozen different flavours of your widget. And hardly 'universal' either. Maybe we'll see a genre of widget converters along the line of the Amnesty Generator, that will convert widgets to all the major platforms at the crank of a handle?

For the record, I would like to point out here that the term Universal Widget™ has been claimed as a Snipperoo Ltd trademark since the middle of last year.

MySpace: A Place for Widgets?

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch has the scoopette from MySpace on Why We Block Widgets.

MySpace PR has replied to our request for comment on the Imeem blockage that we reported over the weekend. Julie Henderson, SVP Corporate Communications at Fox Interactive (MySpace’s parent company), says:

"If a widget violates our TOS, we block them. Breaches would include any person, widget or software that violates copyright, poses security risks, distributes pornography or engages in commercial activity. Commercial activity includes selling ads on a MySpace page through their widget or software.

    In the instance of Revver specifically, we told them we were going to block them if they continued to sell ads on our pages. They refused to stop selling ads on our pages – so we blocked them. No mystery there.

    Also, we have no plans – current or future – to charge a “toll.” Third party widget providers just need to follow our terms of service…"

So that's ok then. No commercial activity and you're ok. Umm, can someone define commercial activity? Sounds like a catchall for 'we don't like your widget'. But maybe I'm wrong and MySpace don't want to monetize their space. At the end of the day, all is fair, MySpace can choose exactly how they want to handle access. All we would ask is that they make it completely clear what the rules are, not make them up as they go along, or play fast and loose with their ToS.

Of course, if MySpace actuallyl had a sensible API to manage embedding of widgets, none of this would really be necessary, would it? I'd say watch this space, there is so obviously something in the planning or my name is not Rupert Murdoch.