What Growth in Widget networks means to the Web Strategist

Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang is watching widgets this year - as we all are. Read the full post - there's a lot more in it, all very interesting and prescient.

What Growth in Widget networks means to the Web Strategist

Expect widgets to act like a network, the span over many different containers like social networks, websites, and blogs. Since widgets are opt-in by the publisher or social network member, it’s a great way to track who’s actually interested in the content. As a result, the opportunity for more sophisticated marketing and advertising moves from carpet bombing to opt-in nearly GPS radar-like accuracy.

This time last year, there were no widgets in Facebook, and now there are over 13,000. I recognize that this is a growth market Widget ad revenue was estimated at about $20 million in 2007, or about one-thousandth of Internet advertising as a whole.

Spending low, but expect growth According to the data (from Comscore) that 6% of internet advertising dollars were being spent on social networks, and only a fraction currently is spent on widgets. Expect that to grow in both camps.

BBC Joins With MySpace

The BBC announces a partnership with MySpace to do stuff together. This is a deal by the BBC's commercial arm, who are mandated with raising revenues from BBC content worldwide, so predictably this is a global project. We'll have to wait to see the details, but it's a widgetsphere expansion story.

Growing Online, BBC Is to Join With MySpace - New York Times.

The commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation is expected to announce a partnership with MySpace on Thursday to make some of its content available on MySpace, the popular social networking Web site.

MySpace, part of the News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, said Wednesday that the relationship was its first global agreement with a major broadcaster. The companies will share advertising revenue.

The BBC has already found some success syndicating content on the Google Web site YouTube, where its videos have garnered more than three million views since last February. MySpaceTV is the second most popular video Web site, behind YouTube.

For the BBC, the latest deal offers an opportunity to widen the release of its content, trying to reach younger consumers where they socialize.

“This partnership continues our strategy of putting BBC content right at the heart of where audiences spend their time and watch video online,” Simon Danker, the director of digital media at BBC Worldwide, said in a statement.

OpenSocial is an engine, not a aeroplane!

Dare, it could be said, is a constructive critic of OpenSocial. OK, he's a Microsoft guy, but he also raises a lot of pertinent issues in a long post. Then he boils it down to a five sentence elevator pitch:

Dare Obasanjo

OpenSocial is billed as a standardized widget platform for the Web, it isn't. OpenSocial is a standard set of REST APIs which social networks can utilize to expose user profiles and relationship data. Everything else required by a widget platform from authentication and authorization to user interface integration and an application directory is unspecified. OpenSocial is to a standardized widget platform as an internal combustion engine is to an airplane. A step in the right direction but still very far from the end goal.

Technorati Tags: wguk07, opensocial, widget

eBay and their social networking

eBay rolled out their social network to limp applause, i.e. it's not that it's done well, but we applaud that they do it at all. TechCrunch gets to the nub of the matter, by pointing out that they need to allow fragmentation and widgetization of their content. This 'fragment and widgetize' meme will become more prevalent and indeed dominant over the next couple of years. So far, a lot of people are talking the talk, but few are walking the walk. eBay Launches Shopping Social Networks

What would really be smart would be if eBay allowed anyone to easily take any module on a neighborhood page—the reviews, the visual product search, the discussions, or the eBay blog posts—and embed them on other Web pages like Facebook, MySpace, or their blogs. People who are really into modern furniture might put that particular product-search module on their blog, for instance, just because it surfaces cool-looking Eames chairs and retro clocks available on eBay Making such widgets available would help draw more traffic into these shopping neighborhoods. And if eBay tied them into its affiliate-fee program that pays for each referral that results in a sale, you’d have these widgets all over the place.

The "main site" is dead

Oren from Mashery quotes Charlie O'Donnell over at This Is Going To Be BIG from Facebook apps or APIs? Why choose?.

Aptly titled "Fuck Facebook Conversion: Be platform agnostic and use your own APIs", he makes the very valid point that facebook apps are your site, and we need to reject the notion that they exist to refer traffic to your "main site".  He quickly encapsulates some of my favorite rants.

As Charlie puts it...

    The whole idea that you have a "main site" is dead. Stick a fork in it.

Quite. Nicely put.

Massive networks of widget-based microtransactions

Susan Wu from Charles River Ventures on funding Social Media:

Social Media is a 1st cousin to companies like Slide and RockYou - both of which are essentially virtualized social operating systems, coordinating massive networks of widget-based microtransactions.

We’re now moving into a client agnostic era, where clients - whether they be Flash, Ajax, Facebook-centric, or MySpace-centric - are marketing channels whose function it is to drive efficiency into the process of targeting and segmenting your users.

[Thanks Fergus from Nooked who claims the second part of the above as his mission statement]

Can I put my Facebook life in my blog via Netvibes?

After making a Netvibes module for my Facebook account, I should now be able to add my Facebook life to my blog - like this:

Nope - that's just a button which allows you to add the Facebook widget to your Netvibes account. I'm looking for the ability to export a Netvibes widget as a widget for the wider web. I thought Netvibes had this - I know Pageflakes can do it. More research ...

OK, Netvibes don't do export and Pageflakes don't have a Facebook widget.

That's it for now. Yourminis? Webwag? Anyone?

Quantcast to track widgets

Venturebeat reports that Quantcast becomes latest widget traffic tracker.

This relatively new San Francisco company monitors traffic to Internet sites. Today, it adds a video and widget measurement service, also free. It is still a test version and publishers include Slide, PictureTrail, RockYou, MetaCafe and MochiMedia. It reports on traffic to all Flash-based media, including online games and downloaded desktop widgets. The service reports a widget’s “reach,” the number of times a video has been “played” or that widget has been clicked on, and the categories chosen (a publisher can tag a widget or video as a “game” or “comedy,” for example). It will also report things such as which users clicked on the widget most often (frequency), and the demographics of these users, based on other information Quantcast collects. It provides this information in a pie chart. To use it, you have to register here www.quantcast.com/quantified-publisher.jsp, and more info is here www.quantcast.com/quantified-video.jsp

VC Perspectives on the Facebook Platform

Andrew Chen, formerly of Revenue Science and now an Entrepreneur in Residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures is interviewed by Inside Facebook blog about the f8 platform. The thing I like most about this interview is how Andrew just uses the word widget to apply to things that use the Facebook API. No faffing about here (Facebook do not use the widget word) - it seems to me that this is correct usage, in that the widgetisation of the web is ultimately about the interplay and interdependence of content, not about small bits of code that you can put on your site. Oh yes, he's also a sceptic, like me.
VC Perspectives on the Facebook Platform: Andrew Chen

IF: You call yourself a “skeptic” on the benefits of the Facebook Platform for widget developers. Why?

AC: I think Mark Zuckerberg is very smart, but I see a lot of challenges for widget creators. The platform is a great opportunity for widget developers to put up some huge adoption numbers, but the revenue opportunity is still very much unproven.

IF: Would you like to comment on any other strategic challenges you see for Facebook app developers?

AC: It will be interesting to see how Facebook treats its widget ecosystem. Certainly there’ll be a honeymoon period in the set of relationships, but it’s also clear from Facebook’s perspective that they have an incentive to make sure no application is ever more popular than the Facebook platform itself.

Towards a distributed widgetsphere

Marc Canter calls for a distributed widgetsphere. We love it.
Persistent life bits in the valley of the DLA.

A distributed widgetsphere may be the answer. Something that could scrape MyBlogLog, mesh into Twitter, support Clearspring’s analytics, Upload to Wordpress, migrate from TypePad into Vox, tie into NetVibes’ universe and make Ray Ozzie very happy by bringing Microsoft into this world via shared micro-content and contacts. And I’d sure like to make Jerry Yang and Brad Horowitz happy too.

What is the widget world coming to

Nic Brisbourne has a road to Damascus moment - and surprise, it's driven by money! Actually, he provides a typically excellent analysis of the widget space and how it's moved on somewhat ...
The Equity Kicker : What is the widget world coming to?

Back in Jan I wrote that widgets can be an important source of distribution for consumer internet businesses, but that lack of revenue model made it hard for me to get excited about pure play widget businesses.

I’ve had to have a bit of re-think! MySpace’s $250m acquisition of Photobucket (a pure play widget company whose widget lets you display slide shows of your photos) tells me that thinking about value might help pick the winners from the losers in this space.

The Widget Economy

VentureBlog on The Widget Economy. An excellent analysis, well worth reading:

As I wandered the pavilion floor of the DEMO conference earlier this year, the challenges posed by the "widget economy" became pretty clear. I talked with lots of companies, and in particular found myself gravitating towards the various widget providers. But what struck me as I talked with the latest generation of media platforms -- be they for photo sharing or video sharing or animation -- was that these companies are going to face a serious challenge when it comes to monetizing their traffic. That challenge is a byproduct of their precarious relationship with the "host" services to which they attach. To the extent those relationships are symbiotic, the combined organism will thrive. However, to the extent those relationships are, in fact, parasitic, the host will need to shed the parasite in the name of survival.

Ten Sins of the Widget makers

It amazes me that, despite all the love and attention that is put into widgets, most widget producers don't seem to pay much attention to the needs of their customers - the widget users.
My experience last week with Jobboard widgets almost drove me to distraction - how could these horrible things be allowed to exist?

1. It's just big, that's the way we made it, our designers love it.

2. Sorry, you can't choose a colour.

3. We're going to put our logo and our name in it. And also under it

4. You can have it long and short or tall and narrow, but not short and narrow.

5. Oh, we just can't be bothered to let you resize it unless  you want to hack the code (YouTube)

6. We put everything in the code, so if you want to change anything, come back and get another copy.

7. Nope, you can't change the heading.

8. Look, every part is necessary, you don't get to pick and choose (MyBlogLog)

9. Didn't realise that the speed of our servers would now affect the speed of your site loading, sorry.

10. Look, the whole point is that we get to slap our huge logo on everyone else's work (Google Web Gadgets)

OK, most of these are caused because the widget designers don't seem to think about what the end user might want. They are making lovely sexy flash widgets, but for some reason they seem to think space in the sidebar is infinite, or that the user won't mind that the widget clashes with their carefully wrought design. Even Google's Adsense, which works so well in terms of design, won't let me specify the precise size for any ads - so I end up with ad blocks that don't relate to everything else in the sidebar. Or, if you think rounded corners are lovely - how about also offering square corners for those sites that don't want to shock the system (Musestorm score good points on this point).

So come on widget designers, get your acts together. Be proud widget designers. Write guidelines and conform to them. Ask the end users what they want and deliver it. Don't get carried away with your technical excellence - think about the product.

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Technorati Tags: widget widgets

Clearspring hits 3 billion served

Widgify hits the 3 billion widgets served mark. A bit faster than Mcdonalds.

Hooman says: Hooray! Clearspring just served 3B widgets. Not bad for a couple months, eh?

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ExpressWidgets from SpringWidgets

SpringWidgets has rolled out ExpressWidgets which allows you to make a quick widget for your site from any RSS feed.

The ExpressWidgets process lets you create your personalized widget in 2 Easy Steps! SpringWidgets is the only Widget Platform that gives you the ability to share more than just text feeds...      ...we make it simple to embed your blogs, feeds, audio or video podcasts with a few simple clicks. Once you're finished, your one-of-a-kind widget will be added to the SpringWidgets Gallery. Now share it with the world to increase the visibility of your syndicated content!

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Widget Discussion Group

I've thought for a while that there is probably more discussion to be had in the widgetspace. There's a lot going on and a lot of questions around, but no forum for discussing it all. I've started a Yahoo group for anyone interested in talking widgets. Hopefully we can pick up on things that are blogged about and things that we come across and take it a bit further.

What it's about: Discussion of all things widgety for web sites: code snippets that can be embedded in third party sites. New widgets; widget theory; widget strategy; widget builders; widget platforms; widget startups - everything you ever wanted to know about web widgets.

Click to join webwidgets

Widget Statistics

Lijit have been crawling sites that have instlled their 'Wijit' and bring us the first pass at some very interesting Widget Statistics.

These statistics are based on a crawl of 8552 blogs done over April 11-15, 2007. This crawl was "centered" on blogs with the Lijit widget (or as we call it, Wijit), and expanded outwards by following the blogrolls. Due to some bugs in how we stored this data, we had to throw out a large number of blogs. These stats only include numbers which we are sure to be correct. This is our first time, after all! For this sample we take a wide definition of widgets, including non-visible widgets such as as Google Analytics. Also note that we do not include image-only widgets, this includes the Feedburner subscriber count badge and the LinkedIn badge. Also not included are "widgets" that are automatically added by a blogging platform, like those from Blogger or Typepad. Because our crawl expanded outwards by blogrolls, and because of the general disconnect between the traditional blogosphere and social networks, widgets from sites like MySpace are not included in these stats.

Although (as Lijit themselves say), these numbers need to be taken with a pinch or two of salt, it does give us a breakdown of the relative popularity of widget categories. As Lijit say, it looks like bloggers are more interested in knowing who visited their site than they are in earning money from them. I'd say there are many more types of widget out there - but at least Lijit understand that there are 'invisible' widgets such as ad codes that count in the mix. Take a look at the full site to see specific widget producers in the rankings and for breakdowns of the categories. Congratulations to Lijit for this, and we look forward to further updates.

 

Facebook Widgets

Pete at Mashable! and others pass on rumours of impending  Facebook Widgets. Personally, I think anything Facebook to to add a bit of variety to their interface will be a good thing. My main interest is in public widgets, not inward facing widgets of the Netvibes/Pageflakes variety. It's fairly obvious that public widgets have the most ongoing value - which is why we're seeing Pageflakes and now Netvibes move to make public versions of their private pages. However, time will tell whether this is something that will work or just a re-run of the big home-page startups of the nineties (remember Tripod anyone?).

Here’s something we’ve been tracking for a while, but it’s bubbling to the surface today. It’s been mentioned in passing in a few mainstream articles in recent weeks, so we give fair probability to the rumor, aired today by Wired, that Facebook is considering the addition of widgets to profile pages. This isn’t part of Facebook Share, which has allowed the sharing of rich media content for some time, but would actually provide a permanent spot on profile pages.

If it goes ahead, the move would be the biggest blow to MySpace so far. The site is being criticized for its failure to embrace third party development, and hundreds of developers are looking for alternative places to embed their widgets should MySpace decide to block them. What’s more, Facebook now has a great deal of momentum and a good reputation with developers thanks to the Facebook API. (from Mashable!)

Widget Wars: MySpace shuts off Photobucket

Looks like a major offensive has been launched in the MySpace widget wars -

Breaking news: Posting from Photobucket to MySpace.

A Message to our Customers Today MySpace made the decision to prevent Photobucket users from posting their videos and remixes to their MySpace pages.

This action by MySpace means that all of the videos and remixes you created will no longer show up on your MySpace profile, blog and comments section. More specifically, if you attempt to add new videos or remixes to your profile, they will be removed.

We are not happy about this and we’re pretty sure you’re not happy either. We appreciate that you have invested hundreds of thousands of hours using the editing, remixing and management tools and features available only on Photobucket. In particular, you've all been really embracing videos at Photobucket -- to the tune of 50,000 video uploads a day, which is great. Rest assured that your content is being kept safe in your Photubucket album even though it may disappear from your MySpace pages.

We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media. MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit.

What can you do? Vote with your feet and your keyboards. 

Tell MySpace how you feel.

(1) Write to mscontact@myspace.com or click here to give them your thoughts.

(2) Send a MySpace bulletin to all your friends telling them to also give MySpace their feedback.

(3) You can also post a comment on this blog.

Birth of the Social Aggregator

Call out the aggregators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

(with apologies to Thunderclap Newman)

Hooman at Widgify. continues his disquisition on the Birth of the Social Aggregator:

A New Information Architecture

So via convergent evolution, everyone seems to be driving towards a similar information architecture that supports users: 1. Aggregating data and web services 2. Keeping some of this junk private 3. Sharing with the ‘right’ people across networks and devices 4. Oh yea, and making it collaborative at every step (social networks!) I call this information architecture the Social Aggregator. If the value proposition for the portal was, “we aggregate content for you to consume,” the value proposition for the Social Aggregator is, “we give YOU tools to aggregate, create, and share content.” My buddy Marc Canter calls this concept the DLA, or Digital Lifestyle Aggregator. Regardless of what you call it, it is a pretty damn powerful concept. And, it is here to stay.

Wave of Widgets

Wave of Widgets Spreads on the Web - washingtonpost.com.

Wave of Widgets Spreads on the Web Entrepreneurs Experiment With Ways to Profit From Web Site, Desktop Gizmos
Kim Hart Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, April 9, 2007

The standard Internet advertisement is so familiar that most people tune it out: a billboard stripped across the top of a Web site, waiting for consumers to surf by and maybe click on it.

Now a young generation of online-ad creators are pushing a newer idea: putting a brand on a mini-site so fun or useful -- a video game or a spruced-up calculator or a live sports update -- that people download it, paste it on their personal blogs or social networking sites, use it again and again and share it with friends.

A widget is a Web page within a Web page that has dynamic content -- such as a game, a stock ticker, a video, a news update -- and can be copied from user to user. It's called a widget, an old word for a 21st-century product.

Birth of a Widgetvangelist

Rob 'fesses up to being a widgetvangelist. I guess I am one too. There are a few of us about, but now we've been named and shamed. So what should he do with the domain?

I am a Widgetvangelist

I didn’t mean to be.  But I can’t help myself. More and more often I find myself talking to startups and I hear myself selling them on Widgets.  Widgets are a great way to “get viral”.  A widget can display your service/site/product in front of more eyes than anything else on the web that you can buy right now. I’m really hard pressed to find a business that can’t benefit from creating a widget - if you are building something social, it’s hard to beat a widget.  Widgets are relatively cheap - basically you write a small amount of code that re-packages some existing code (functionality) from your web site.  And others can display that section or your site on many other sites.  It sounds too simple to be true.  It isn’t though - at least not yet - not until the space is so crowded that there just isn’t room for yet another widget.  We are a LONG way from that, I think. I’ve had three conversations with social startups this week - and in each case one of the things I recommended is that they develop a widget.  Why?  Widgets are an extension of your web site - a way to put part of your site on MANY sites.  For very little incremental cost.  There are tens of millions of blogs - giving blogger’s a widget is like taking candy from a baby.  It costs you very little, and it adds value to the blogger’s site.  Win-win.

Tila Tequila and the widget

The Guardian newspaper here in the UK has a report on the battle between Tila Tequila and MySpace, with this classic quote:

Tequila's protest draws focus to the growing desire to make money from social networking and other Web 2.0 sites. The issue revolves around the word "widget", the term used to describe small applications that can be incorporated into anyone's web page. Increasingly popular online, they can help companies sell their wares, effectively creating shop fronts in millions of new locations.

The Recommendation Engine is the new network

Sometimes it can be a bit frustrating watching the big stories break and not being able to find an angle to get involved. I'm not one of those fly-by-night bloggers who is happy to comment on all things and everything - I have an agenda around widgets and I want to construct a story that takes us forward. So I watch and wait, because I know that ultimately, everything is about widgetization.
And today the waiting pays off as Jeff Jarvis spills the beans on  The NBC/Fox gigadeal on video from a widgety perspective.

The two networks/studios are creating a new company to distribute TV on the sites where large audiences already are: AOL, MySpace, Yahoo, MSN. All their entertainment video and some of their movies will be available there for people to embed in their own pages. This means that a MySpace user who’s an Office fan could put up a widget allowing her readers to watch the clips and even the shows on her page. The joint venture will create a destination site for all this, but this isn’t a portal play; it’s about finding a tolerable — for them — way to distribute content via fans’ sites. I’m told that it’s likely this video also may be made available for embedding on lowly blogs such as this — and obviously, I think that will be key.

Jeff's point is that the game now is not about destination sites, it's about us, the masses, acting as a filter to search out and make available what works, the best stuff, the stuff that matters. We en masse will do this more efficiently than any algorithmn. But only if we have total freedom to pick and choose exactly what we want to embed:

They will blow it if they try to maintain too much control: if they give us only their shows, if they insist on which clips we can embed, if they don’t open up to more programming, if they don’t open up to our putting this stuff in our space (not just Rupert’s MySpace). So we’ll see.

And mark this terminology: we'll be hearing a lot more about it in the coming years:

But it’s all about the recommendation engine as the new network.

 

Widget, widget stats

Simeon Simeonov  writes an interesting blog which covers widgetization a fair bit. He wrote a very interesting entry, Widgets, widgets, everywhere, on Monetization of widgets recently. He has followed it up with a piece on widget stats. I know he has, because I have a copy of it in Bloglines. However, on the actual blog there is no sign of it. The link is to a broken page. So I can't point to this directly, but hopefully  he'll sort it out shortly:

That leaves the Web, which is a very large place. It makes more sense to focus on one important and fast-growing part of the Web–the community category, which consists primarily of blogs and social networks. Now let’s make some assumptions about the near future:

• Category page views: 100B. According to comScore, in January 2007 this category generated 70B page views, up nearly 19% since August 2006, which had nearly 60B page views. So 100B isn’t too far into the future.
• Percentage of page views with widget impressions: 75%. This seems reasonable since most page views should be of blogs and profiles. I know that on some blog sites widgets have 40-50% penetration in the number of blogs, which probably implies a higher penetration in the number of page views. I’d imagine the penetration for social networking sites to be higher.
• Average number of widgets per page view: 2. As a consumer phenomenon widgets are still just taking off. The current averages for blogs are slightly over one per page and are higher for social networks.
• eCPM for widgets: $3. Pundits I’ve talked to peg the range between $2-4 on average. eCPM would be a blend of pay-for-placement content, ads embedded in the widgets and placed around the widgets, CPC and CPA affiliate revenues, etc.
• Percentage of widget impressions that are monetizable: 10%. Now this is a wild guess assumption. I don’t have a good reason why it should be this as opposed to, say 2% or 20%. I know it won’t be 50%. My expectation is that bling and basic utilitarian widgets (get my feed, search, etc.) will account for the vast majority of impressions.

Combining these together would yield an annual market of $540M, growing at the rate of the community category. How will the dollars get split between widget developers, a possible widget delivery network and the real estate owners (site owners and/or page/blog owners) is a very interesting question and one that’s very difficult to answer.

Using Widgets to Build Community on Blogs Featured on NTEN Blog

Beth Kanter has a good roundup on Using Widgets to Build Community on Blogs

Dept. of Yeah we know that

Computerworld gets the idea: The Widgetization of the Web.

While the dot.com era focused squarely on aggregating data on the Internet, one of the most defining characteristics of Web 2.0 is the deconstruction of the Web into small, single-purpose applications called widgets or gadgets.

These small chunks of code can either run on a desktop or be inserted into Web pages. Widgets are gaining popularity among consumers because they allow virtually anyone to easily customize a Web page or social network with news, weather, podcasts, video and other content. Any time a YouTube video, for example, is added to a non-YouTube page, it becomes a widget.

Digital Outlook will be widgetized

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for pointing me to the Avenue A Razorfish published 2007 Digital Outlook Report (6230.6K) which covers a lot of fascinating things, widgets among them.

The Death of the Page View: How AJAX, RSS, and Widgets Will Force Us to Define a New Metric for User Engagement by Garrick Schmitt

Newsweek has declared ‘07 as the year of the widget, and with good
reason. Widgets, which are primarily JavaScript or Flash file interface elements (like
text boxes or windows) that a computer interacts with, are going mainstream. Today
you can download widgets (sometimes called “gadgets”) to your desktop to monitor
stock portfolios, weather, photos, news, and a good deal more—this has been baked
into the Mac OS and, now, Windows Vista. But the biggest growth will be in widgets
that are incorporated into Web pages. YouTube, with its video streams plastered
across the Web, is the most prominent example. Ditto photo streams from Flickr.
And advertisers like Volkswagen and Purina are jumping into the fray by sponsoring
downloadable desktop applications (see VW’s desktop calendar). Widgets signal a
whole new way of experiencing the Web; we’ll no longer be constrained to “pages”
but can experience any type of application in any environment at any time.

MySpace turns into Corporate Evil Monster

We know it's happening and they know it's happening - and now it's happening in the national press. MySpace have to control the space - that's their route to monetization. But it aint gonna be pretty as users realise they are under the thumb of Fox, not floating in a free for all. As Ms Tequila, someone with 1.7 million friends on MySpace, says: “You guys used to be so cool. Don’t turn into a corporate evil monster.” Corporate evil monster? Rupert Murdoch? Who would have thought it.

MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users - New York Times.

Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded. MySpace, the Web’s largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

The Times even got a quote from the Emperor of Widget himself:

Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist who invests in social media companies, said the strategy showed that the News Corporation was trying to take advantage of growing interest in widgets while also trying to carefully control what made it onto MySpace.

But that could be a dangerous strategy, Mr. Wilson said.

“Every attempt everyone has ever made to try to dictate what a person’s Internet experience will be has ended up coming up empty,” he said. “You have to accept the fact that you are never going to be the be-all and end-all of everyone’s experience. They are one click away from everyone else on the Web.”

Widgets, Widgets, Everywhere

The Widget business model debate rumbles on and most instructive it is. David Cohen started it over at Colorado Startups. It was "... the first of the Big or Bullshit series of posts that I’m doing with Brad Feld."

The biggest reason that widgets will be big is simply because users love them. Publishers love them because they save time, promote their mission, or are just plain cool. End users love them because they make the web more functional - even the smallest of publishers can pull off some pretty neat tricks on their sites.

Verdict: Widgets will be Big. They’re content with all the same benefits to the creator as ads. They’ll literally be everywhere. Widgets, RSS, and other technologies are being mashed up left and right, thereby accelerating the decentralization of the web. As more and more of the web is experienced through the portals of our choosing, widgets will help us focus on the microchunks of content that we actually care about.

Then Brad blasted back, concluding:

While there might be room for one or two “widget management systems”, there certainly isn’t the need for 23 of them.  In addition, the ability to actually build a real business based on a packaging and distribution system around the application container widget is unclear to me.  So: widget=big; widget-derivative-business=probably-bullshit.

I called bullshit on this (hopefully everyone realised it was tongue in cheek), mainly because there aren't 23 widget management systems (in comments, I picked the number 23 just to annoy David Cohen - it's his "bad number"), barely even two, and even Brad accepts there may be room for one or two.

In the comments to this, a good debate arrived, including VCMike saying:

Here is my question: if a significant portion of web traffic is going to be consumed through widgets, isn't there an opportunity for widget based analystics (ala omniture), ad serving (ala doubleclick) and ad network??

And if your immediate response is "why not omniture and dblck?" i would ask the same question of Feedburner...

Now, whehter their is a need for both an RSS management system AND a widget management system is a very real question, I think. But is there an opportunity for a new management system for the new world of distributed, deportalized, syndicated, widgetized content? I think so.

Mike then wrote on his blog: 'I am going to try to start a debate here with the best thinkers on the topic: Can the “widget management systems” companies build a real (ie, valuable enough for “venture returns”) business? '

Then Mike's partner, Simeon Simeonov, pitched in with Widgets, Widgets, Everywhere

So, in all of this, where is the money? David Cohen thinks there is money to the made. Brad Feld is skeptical. Jeremy Liew is pondering how RockYou will make money despite its volume. Fred Wilson relates widgets to feeds. My partner, Mike Hirshland, pushes the debate forward. Let’s first consider some of the models for monetizing widgets:    

 

* Several widgets can be packaged with an ad unit next to them.    
* Widgets can embed advertising in their content.    
* They can show promotional campaigns, competitions or other pay-for-placement content. * Widgets can tie into affiliate networks, e.g., buy this product on Amazon.    
* They can collect valuable data, e.g., MyBlogLog.  
To analyze how monetization might work we have to look at the content value chain. There are widget builders. There are the page owners (think bloggers and folks who own a profile on a soc networking site). There are the publishers (site owners). There may or may not be a widget distribution/syndication network in the middle.

And Brad quickly blasted back with YAWP - Yet Another Widget Post in which he mused:

In the emails I got, several people misinterpreted my point of view so I figured I’d start with a quick summary.  I think widgets are an incredible distribution mechanism for web-based functionality.  I love widgets – and love the widgetization of the web.  However, I’m struggling to see where the real business opportunities are in “wrangling widgets” (or – more simply – “widget management systems and infrastructure.”)

When I stare at this and think about the different ways to build businesses to support this, I come up with four business models:

1. a new form of ad network: analogous to DoubleClick
2. a widget management system (WMS): analogous to CMS’s
3. a content distribution network (CDN): analogous to Akamai
4. an analytics business (Stats): analogous to pick-your-analytics package

I don’t buy that #1 (ad networks) is a big moneymaker. 

#2 (WMS) is great and helpful to me as a publisher, but I don’t know how to monetize it. 

#3 (CDN) seems like there should be something interesting there. 

#4 (Stats) just won’t work. 

And I can't wrap this up without quoting Fred Wilson:

Widgets should not be one more publishing system that we need to support. Widgets should be built on top of a feed based architecture. I am stuck on my four rules and I plan on sticking to them a little longer. They are:

1 - Microchunk it - Reduce the content to its simplest form.
2 - Free it - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it.
3 - Syndicate it - Let anyone take it and run with it. 
4 - Monetize it - Put the monetization and tracking systems into the microchunk.

Widgets are part of rules 3 and 4. Widgets are a syndication tool and a tracking tool. And hopefully they'll become a monetization tool as well.

This debate shows that the widgetsphere has potential. Though Brad assesses and writes off all the potential business models, the disagreement and interest from all around shows that he is not necessarily correct. There is a certain fertility and potential here, being played out for all to see. It's almost certain that hybrid versions of all the above will play out during this year and some unexpected successes will be had.

Of course, I have my own views on all of this - but I'll save this for another post.

 

Standard widget icon?

Does anyone think we should have a standard wiget icon - something like the now very recognisable RSS feed icon?

Actually, we've already almost got one. There are several versions of a widget button/icon using a toothed gearwheel around.

Maybe we should all get together and agree on a standard version and release it into the public domain. Then we can build widget recognition around it without constantly reinventing the wheel.

Why would this be good? It would become the identifying mark of a widget - click here, you're going to get a widget of some sort. It would be the identifying mark of 'get this code' or the link to configuring a widget.

I guess we're never going to have an standard definition of a widget (and I don't believe we should try). But we could have a standard mark of a widget.

Anyone want to step up to the plate?

Non-profit widgets

I am reminded that I owe a shoutout to Steve Bridger who blogs in the non-profit sector (funnily enough I spend most of my time in a non-profit zone) with some emphasis on widgets. He also has an Interview with the widget king (which strangely, isn't me, but is the CEO of ChipIn).

nfp 2.0

Here in the UK, Justgiving has added badges (these are just badges) to the toolset available to fundraisers (is it just me who thinks all widgets, gadgets, etc… look better with rounded corners?).

Justgiving badge

Their widgets have been doing pretty well, too. Since their release at the end of December, over 8,000 individual Justgiving widgets have been posted on the web and the highest performing widgets have registered over 500,000 page impressions.

Where have all the widget bloggers gone?

By the end of last year there was a fertile and growing bunch of widget bloggers who were exploring and expanding the Widgetsphere. But suddenly they seem to have all dropped off the edge of the planet. 
Here's the scorecard:

Tim Post at FlyingSeeds - 1 (though Tim is semi retired from the game, fast retirement!)

Hooman at Widgify (Clearspring) - 1 post (been a bit busy)

Laurence at SexyWidget - 3 posts in March

StickiWidgets - 2 posts in March

WidgetsLab - keeping the workrate up with 13 posts

and me? 11 posts

Come on everyone, keep up, this space is going crazy.

Actually, the king widget blogger has to be Pete at Mashable - font of all widget wisdom!

I call Brad Feld=bullshit

Brad Feld, generally excellent blogging VC, disses an entire segment of startups in Another View on Widgets. And while he claims he's seen 23 'widget management systems'. He then admits (in the comments) this is rubbish.

While there might be room for one or two “widget management systems”, there certainly isn’t the need for 23 of them.  In addition, the ability to actually build a real business based on a packaging and distribution system around the application container widget is unclear to me.  So: widget=big; widget-derivative-business=probably-bullshit.

Only time will tell, but it seems to me that if there is a place for widgets=big, then there is scope for widget management=big, otherwise, chaos.

Clearspring funded

I thought Hooman was a bit quiet on the bloging front, seems he's been busy elsewehre:
RED HERRING | AOL Founders Invest in Widgets.

AOL Founders Invest in Widgets

Steve Case and Ted Leonsis contribute to $5.5-million investment in syndicator Clearspring.
March 5, 2007

By Michael Cohn

AOL founders Steve Case and Ted Leonsis on Tuesday joined in a $5.5-million second round investment in widget syndication specialist Clearspring Technologies.

The startup plans to use the funding to build up its staff as it syndicates so-called widgets, or miniature web applications, for customers such as the NBA, the Indianapolis Colts, Universal Pictures, and slide show startup RockYou.

Land Barons and Land Grabs

Social networking cha cha and the land grab

Some land barons say they are open to the idea of a Web without boundaries, but the business reality is collecting as many users as possible and keeping them fenced in, grazing on each other's social media. APIs and emerging standards, such as microformats and OpenID, will enable more semi-permeable boundaries, but for the foreseeable future users will be not be able to engage in the network of social networks.

The widget game

Pete at Mashable hits the nail on the head:

The widget startups are playing a high-risk, high reward game - ride the MySpace wave and you can have hundreds of thousands of users in a matter of months, but get blocked by MySpace and it all comes crashing down. That’s why these guys need to diversify: partnering with more networks (Bebo Widgets was a big boost for Slide, RockYou and Photobucket), having a broader range of offerings and even building “sticky” social networking features into the sites themselves.

I suspect, however, that the widget world will be similar to the YouTube story: the naysayers will say it’s not a real business and that it’s stupid for one company to rely so heavily on another, and yet a few of these widget companies will use their momentum as a springboard to massive success. If the naysayers had their way, everyone would be working for startups that bought sprockets for $1 and sold them for $1.20 - a solid business model, but boring as hell.

(New at RockYou: MySpace Countdowns, Corkboards, Musical Slide Shows.)

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

 

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.

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.

Loosen Grip On Content

Online Media Daily reports what IBM consulting is saying to media companies: Loosen Grip On Content And yes, that does mean widgets.

TO DEAL WITH THREATS FROM new digital competitors, IBM's media-consulting arm recommends that traditional media companies focus fanatically on consumers and embrace new technologies and business models.

In its new report, "Navigating the Media Divide," IBM says that mainstream media companies need to loosen their grip on proprietary content in order to capture young, tech-savvy consumers who have fueled the enormous growth of YouTube and other sites built on user-generated material.

Although traditional media revenues still dwarf those of new media, the latter category is expected to grow much faster--20% compared to 6% for old media from 2006 to 2010.

The study advises content owners and media distributors to cooperate in allowing the legal reuse of content for mash-ups, overdubs and other ways "that celebrate their favorite branded content in new and creative ways." It cites companies such as video-sharing site Revver and Al Gore's Current TV as companies that are already paying contributors for supplying programming.

The Widget Platform Landscape

Laurence looks at the state of the widgetsphere in Making Sense of the Widget Platform Landscap

So would widget publishers be willing to pay to improve their rate of widget uptake?  As a widget publisher with a small development team and a project list a mile long, I would say yes – as long as it was on a pay for performance basis, and I was able to secure a few “have to have” attributes such as widget to widget distribution, and a crawlable backlink.  I don’t see any reason for my developers to try and recreate the good work that has been done by Widgetbox and Musestorm in building tools that make it easier for end users to consume my company’s widgets.

Tracking the DIY phenomenon

Dion Hinchliffe on Tracking the DIY phenomenon: Widgets, badges, and gadgets

It seems obvious that portable Web parts, which I'll call widgets from here on out since that seems to be the growing consensus on terminology, confer a lot of benefits to those that use them.  Widgets let anyone put the high value services and content of the Web's leading companies right on their own site, for anyone to use.  There are widgets readily available that offer customized local Google search, weather maps, instant messaging, social bookmarking, site meters, games, and even entire software applications.  And most of them can be installed with a bit of GUI configuration and a cut and paste.  There's little question that the Web is increasingly turning into a sort of online Home Depot with its shelves lined with thousands of useful, off-the-shelf parts of every description and utility.

The Anarchist Gift Economy

Before I was an entrepreneur I was an artist and before that I was an anarchist. (and funnily enough that's exactly how my talk at LIFT started last week). Time hits on my old friend Kropotkin to ponder (though I think they missed the point a bit in that headline) Getting Rich off Those Who Work for Free

It might seem very odd to look to a long-dead Russian anarchist for business advice. But Peter Kropotkin's big idea--that there are important human motivations beyond what he called "reckless individualism"--is very relevant these days. That's because one of the most interesting questions in business has become how much work people will do for free.

Kropotkin was an aristocrat who, after being imprisoned for his insurrectionist activities, escaped and fled to England in 1876. He also drew the first good topographic maps of Siberia and wrote a memoir of his revolutionary days that has become a minor classic. More to the point, he proposed in his 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, that the survival of animal species and much of human progre