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By Barry Graubart
Build it and they will come.
 That was the promise of the early days of the Internet. There was a race to develop large portals, packed with content. Yahoo, AOL, Lycos and others battled for the top position. Meanwhile, in the B2B space, publishers raced to stake out ground to become the top portal in their vertical market.
For better or worse, the 'Field of Dreams' period is coming to a rapid close. In what has been described as the "deportalization" of the Internet, users of Web 2.0 services are no longer content to use the big portals. Instead, these users seek to create their own Internet spaces. Web 2.0 users want to select the content they need, group it with other content in which they are interested, arrange that on a blog or social network page, customise its look, comment on it and share it with friends or colleagues.
Users are rapidly adopting the use of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and more. As they replace portals as the users' typical home page, users will demand to get their content delivered through these sites. The primary means of delivering services to a social network page is the widget.
What are widgets?
Widgets are small applications which can be easily installed on social networks, blogs and other types of websites. Their name may vary, depending upon the platform. Google calls them Gadgets; Facebook refers to them as apps. But they are all essentially the same thing.
Wikipedia defines widgets as anything that can be embedded within a page of html.
Widgets on a Facebook™ page.
There are three key attributes for widgets:
- Simplicity
- Portability
- Ability to customise
Simplicity: What makes widgets work is the fact that users can just click and drag them to their desktop or onto a page. There's no need to view code or understand complex terms or concepts. It's hard to get users to understand something like RSS, but you can easily show them a widget and let them grab it for their own page.
Portability: Widgets should be platform-independent; ideally, the same widget (or variations of the same) should be installable on various social networks and blog platforms. In addition, the viral nature of widgets means that users who see a widget they like on one site should be able to grab a copy for their own site.
Ability to customise: When you're hoping a user will install your widget on their page, they should get the chance to customise it; at a minimum they should be able to set the colors to fit within their page. Customization can go much further, depending upon the widget. The National Basketball Association provides widgets where the user can pick his or her favorite player. iTunes widgets allows you to share your favorite music or television shows. A widget should allow the user to express their individuality.
What does this mean for traditional publishers?
In the early days of the Web, publishers were fearful that they would lose control over their content. They soon learned to embrace the Web, realizing that they could present and organise content just as easily on the Web as in print. Even when licensing their content to portals, publishers could feel confident in knowing how their information would be presented.
In the brave new world of social networks and widgets, control shifts to the user. Users customise their pages and decide what content goes where. Do you want your content to appear next to blog posts, user-generated video or even sexually charged material? That's no longer your decision. The user has control over their page.
Of course, by empowering users you can also create champions for your brand. When users are empowered to interact with and customise your content, they can quickly become advocates.
What platforms support widgets?
There are three primary platforms for widgets today:
1. Blogs
2. Social network pages
3. Desktops and Readers
Blogging platforms such as TypePad and Blogger were among the first to adopt the use of widgets, enabling bloggers to 'add bling to their blogs'. Widgets enable bloggers to showcase music or books they like, share photos and bookmarks or to add community aspects to a blog.
Social networks became a primary focus for widgets when Facebook opened its platform supporting widgets called Facebook applications. Other social networks including MySpace, Friendster and myYearbook also support widgets.
Microsoft Windows Live desktop supports widgets (called Gadgets) as do a host of web-based news readers such as Netvibes and PageFlakes.
An emerging platform for widgets is the mobile space. In 2008, this segment should see considerable growth as users become accustomed to receiving videos and other content on their phones.
And along came Google...
For about six months, it seemed that Facebook was sucking all of the oxygen out of the social networking space, leaving no room for others. The promise of Facebook apps grabbed the attention of developers everywhere. To some it seemed like 'game over'. Hardly a meaningful app or widget had been built, yet we were all conceding the market to Facebook. Except for Google, that is.
When Facebook accepted a capital infusion from Microsoft, Google quickly responded with the introduction of OpenSocial, in conjunction with a number of players in the social networking space. MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Bebo, Ning, Friendster, Viadeo, Salesforce.com and Oracle joined with Google's Orkut platform to announce participation in the OpenSocial Platform.
So what is OpenSocial? To start, it's a set of common application programmer interfaces (APIs) which the participating companies will adopt in order to enable access to their data. In other words, if you are building a gadget to pull a user's list of contacts from Plaxo, you should be able to use the same code to pull the comparable contacts from LinkedIn. Common APIs are critical to a successful ecosystem as developers don't have to choose which platform to write for.
It's still very early for OpenSocial and most of the participating sites have yet to implement the tools to support these gadgets. You can expect to see them start rolling out applications early in 2008. And, while Facebook is still the early platform leader, new apps for the various OpenSocial participants should position them as a viable alternative.
For what can widgets be used?
There are a myriad of potential widget applications for content providers. Probably the most straightforward use of a widget is to display recent content. Publishers in recent years have launched numerous RSS feeds of the most recent content by subject. Widgets give you the perfect mechanism to let users integrate those feeds. For example, a newspaper might let users choose to display news about a specific political candidate in an election widget. The website iVillage has launched a widget which displays the most recent articles on a selected topic, while a CNN widget displays snippets from video of the top news stories.
Many widgets are used simply for awareness. The National Basketball Association has launched a widget where a user picks his or her favorite player and it displays information, photos and videos about that player in the widget.
Later this winter, Alacra will release a widget for the Alacra affiliate program. The widget, geared towards bloggers, displays links to contextually relevant research based upon the specific blog post. The blogger is then compensated using a pay-per-action model when their readers buy any of that research.
How do you get your widgets distributed?
There's no single strategy that's best for all platforms and markets. The key is to understand the behavior of your target users. If your widget is geared towards the consumer market and is in support of an existing website, the simplest thing is to place the widget on your site. The NBA widget is available on the player page of any player on their NBA.com website. Users simply click a "grab it" button and add the widget to their social network.
The major platforms, such as Facebook, have widget catalogs where you can display information about your widget and allow users to install them. Of course, with thousands of Facebook applications launched since their platform went live this spring, it's pretty hard for your widget to stand out. On Facebook, where most widgets are for amusement rather than business, viral adoption remains the major channel. Users who install your widget are encouraged to invite their social network. That network effect can lead to millions of installs for a popular widget like the Facebook app, iLike, which allows users to share their preferences in music, movies and more.
There are also third party catalogs for widgets. Widgetbox is a platform for widget distribution. Many users use the Widgetbox catalog to find widgets.
While the Facebook apps catalog is open, some platforms such as the TypePad blogging platform only include select widgets in their catalog. Anyone can build a widget for TypePad, but only those deemed relevant by TypePad publisher Six Apart are included in the catalog. Through this approach, TypePad limits their widget catalog to a manageable and navigable group of roughly one hundred widgets. For those who have made it into the catalog, this provides strong awareness, where they might be lost in a massive catalog like Facebook.
Widget distribution channels have yet to emerge in the B2B space. Similar to ad networks, the bulk of the activity for widgets has been in the consumer segment. While there's no harm in listing B2B widgets in catalogs, publishers shouldn't expect that to drive mass adoption. Instead, B2B publishers will have to rely upon the methods they've traditionally used to reach their markets.
Your own website is probably the first place to start. Highlight your widgets on your website. Support the widgets with stories of how they might be used. Provide supporting documentation on the platforms where they can be used. Users of social networks have quickly learned how widgets are used on their pages. B2B users, who may not be as familiar, will require more guidance.
What's Coming Next?
Widgets are still in the early adoption stage. During the past year, most widgets that have been deployed have been in the consumer entertainment space. Few if any of these widgets have been launched with specific business goals. Those with commercial aspirations have focused on brand awareness. The only money that has been made to date has been the result of a handful of small acquisitions of popular widgets.
In the coming year, widgets should move towards the early mainstream user community. While entertainment will still be the primary driver, we should begin to see revenues tied directly to widgets. Widgets can already carry advertising, leveraging existing pay-per-click and CPM models. eCommerce widgets, such as the Amazon or Alacra widget, will play a greater role in the space.
Widgets for mobile devices should see strong growth. Users have been hesitant to accept advertising on their mobile devices. Widgets, which provide increased utility to their phones, should be a strong advertising platform.
From a technology perspective, widgets will become more sophisticated. The early widgets have been pretty simplistic. But the Facebook application platform and OpenSocial's gadget platform both have strong technological capabilities. Developers for these platforms will put capabilities into these widgets which were previously available only on the desktop or sophisticated web applications.
Developers will have to choose the platforms they wish to support. Much like video games designed to play on Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft devices, most developers will look to support both Facebook and OpenSocial along with the standard blog platforms. Over time, if the platforms take on stronger identities (for example with Facebook for entertainment and LinkedIn and Plaxo for B2B apps), developers may be able to focus on a single platform. Until you learn where your potential users will be, it's advisable to support both.
Users have already made it clear that they want their content, their way. Those publishers locked into the Web 1.0 portal mindset will find themselves losing market share. While it's impossible to project where the market will be in 18-24 months, forward-looking publishers will begin to engage their users with widget technology and move forward with their users.
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By Barry Graubart
Barry Graubart has spent the past 20 years applying technology to
content to develop high value business-to-business information
products. Today he serves as Vice President, Product management for Alacra, a leading content technology company. Previously, he served as EVP & Chief Marketing Officer for Leadership Directories,
a content provider of biographical and organizational data. Prior to
Leadership Directories he spent four years in various roles with ClearForest,
an emerging leader in the text analytics market. Previously, he held
general management, product development and marketing roles with B2B
content businesses including divisions of Primedia, Nelson Information
(now Thomson Financial), Kaplan/Washington Post and McClatchy
Newspapers. Barry can be reached at barry@graubart.com
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