Archive for May, 2007

Upgrade and Downtime

Patrick May 16th, 2007

I’m upgrading WordPress, so there will be a bit of downtime. I’ll try to minimize. Thanks!

Om on the Buzz About Widgets

Patrick May 10th, 2007

Om Malik at GigaOm.com has a thought-proving post about the widget space in reaction to the high level of chatter about widgets in the last couple of weeks.

The widget ecosystem might have attracted a lot of money and attention, but not many users. If you checked out WidgetBox, a good proxy for the ecosystem, a typical popular widget has about 300-to-500 subscribers. And amongst those that are popular, they are the ones, which have an element of personal expression.

Om’s analysis is typically very insightful, but this falls short of what widgets are all about. The widget ecosystem is much larger than web widgets for blogs, social networks, and webtop applications like iGoogle and Netvibes. As Danny wrote in the comments, its critical to think of widgets from a consumer point of view (Joe User), and how they interact with digital products.

Desktop widgets allow interfaces with web-based applications, so as more users move to webtop apps like Google Apps, Zoho, etc., widgets provide a means for quick updates and retrievals of common or important content and functionality. Desktop widgets also allow users to customize their interaction with their computers in ways they could not easily do before.

Widgets are also far better at delivering internet content to mobile devices, like the forthcoming weather widget for Apple’s iPhone. Navigation and interaction are simplified, the user interface is optimized for small screens, and views refresh more quickly, as the heavy lifting (UI rendering and other functions) are done on the device.

It is clear that widgets as we currently think about them have some key challenges to overcome. As Om and readers point out, there are only so many blogs and social profiles, and space on those pages is at a premium. And there are only so many users with the temerity to make widgets work. But widgets are in their infancy, and the User Tri-fecta (usefulness, usability and value) is possible. There is no doubt in my mind that widgets will play a huge role in the future of digital products, allowing users to very easily define their digital experiences to suit their needs.

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Weekly Widget Wroundup

Patrick May 6th, 2007

Today marks the beginning of a new feature on idgetsWay: a weekly widget wroundup of some of the most noteworthy news items in the widget world from the previous week.

  • Clearspring serves 3 billionth widget, and the company is now serving 60 million widgets per day.
  • Google brands its personalized “gadgetized” homepage as “iGoogle.” I’ll have more to say about this later.
  • Google was busy in widgets. They also announced Gadget Ads, widgets in ad-standard sizes and delivered through their advertising platform. Niall wrote a really good post about this development.
  • Another of the big Internet companies, eBay also got busy with widgets, launching eBay To Go, a tool for creating widgets out of auction items. At first glance, these seem to be really well implemented.
  • As reported by MacNN, Apple has filed patents dealing with how to run multiple instances of Dashboard, or collections of widgets.

I’ll attempt a more detailed analysis on each of these in the coming days.

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Update of Widget Market Segmentation

Patrick May 3rd, 2007

widget_mktplace.pngAfter feedback from a few key players in the widget industry, I’ve refined my ideas about the segmentation of the widget marketplace. The refinements clarify the distinction between the Nettop and Pubtop segments. Previously, I defined Nettop companies as syndicators for major content owners; now, I’m referring to Nettop as companies providing syndication services to developers and content owners. I also redefined Pubtop to be widget-friendly social networks, blog platforms, and other publishing systems. The net effect of these changes are that WidgetBox moves from Pubtop to Nettop, and Pubtop now includes MySpace. The chart shows each segment, its definition, and some examples for each.

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