Patrick April 18th, 2007
According to Wired’s Listening Post blog, Facebook will reportedly allow users to embed third-party widgets on their personal profile pages, opening up a vast distribution channel for content owners, widget syndication companies, and widget developers.
Widgetbox yesterday announced Showcase pages (when I was creating this post, Widgetbox.com was unavailable) which feature all of the Widgetbox widgets for a particular content owner, such as AOL.
Patrick April 5th, 2007
I’ve spent a fair amount of time exploring the widget economy in recent weeks, and it occurs to me that there is no easy way to describe the various mutations of widgets that are spawning across the software universe. Intuitively, I wanted a framework on which to better understand the various ways in which widgets are evolving. So I sat down and tried to create one. The landscape is changing daily, so my work here may be outdated as soon as its published, but I find the following widget market segmentation intriguing.
- Desktop: Apple, Opera, Windows, Yahoo
- Webtop: Google, NetVibes, PageFlakes, YourMinis
- Netttop: Clearspring
- Pubtop: Blogger, Typepad, Widgetbox, WordPress
- Mobtop: Koloroo, Opera Mobile, Widsets, Zenzui
The examples in each of these segments is not meant to be exhaustive. To be sure, there are many other purveyors of widgets that fit into each. Perhaps one day, I’ll attempt to quantify the widget universe further and create a detailed list. In the meantime, read more to learn how I define each of these segments.
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Patrick April 3rd, 2007
Clearspring, one of the early leaders in the widget syndication space with deals from content providers like NBA.com and CBS, has a new President & COO. Jay Rappaport, most recently president of Vonage America, is also a former executive at America Online, where he led several different divisions. This is a major deal for Clearspring and the widget space in general, as it signals a continuing investment and interest in the market.
Patrick March 28th, 2007
The launch of Zenzui raises a key question: how does Zenzui differ from WidSets? Both offer widgets for mobile devices. There’s much more info on WidSets.com about how it works, and WidSets has first-mover advantage after launching on June 6, 2006. But Zenzui claims to have been in development for 3 years, so they may be much further along than it appears. If I could, I’d install a few WidSets, give them a test drive and write you a review, but alas, their supported device list doesn’t include the Palm Treo 650.
Patrick March 28th, 2007
Zenzui execs saw my post on their launch, and the PR team was kind enough to send some images (thanks!). I’ll post more later, but I’ve chosen to show this one first because it is a really compelling example of how widgets can be deployed to extend brand, reach, transactions, customer loyalty and more. Shopping at Amazon.com will likely be far easier using this tile than the Blazer browser on my Treo.
Patrick March 28th, 2007
So, Zenzui is off and running. This independent company is a spinout of Microsoft Ventures and is using technology developed by Microsoft’s R&D group to essentially bring widgets–”tiles” in Zenzui’s vocabulary–to mobile devices. The website lacks a lot of specifics, but it appears the company is not tied to mobile devices that use the Windows Mobile OS, which if true would be a Good Thing.
Apparently three years in the making, Zenzui tiles are reminiscent of Apple iPhone widgets (click on “Widgets” in the lower right corner) announced in January. But Zenzui looks like they are trying to create and control an entire ecosystem for mobile widgets.
Technorati Tags: widgets, mobile, tiles
