widgets Archive

Start page provider YourMinis has announced that this will be the last week for the start page. They have suggested that YourMinis users transition to another start page including myAOL, iGoogle or MyYahoo. They will apparently focus on creating widgets going forward.

The gallery will remain with detail pages on each widget but they have decided to remove "browsing, favoriting, and statistics functionality" from the public gallery. This means that you can pickup a widget but that’s about it.

YourMinis is a service of Goowy which was acquired by AOL back in February. I can only assume that eventually the widgets will be served via the AOL framework. The Goowy webtop has also been shutdown and users transferred to AOL Mail.

comScore will release their latest Widget Metrix report later this morning. From the report, "A total of 615 million people, representing 65% of the worldwide internet users, viewed or engaged with a widget in June 2008." While this number seems high, I would have expected it to be even higher. Nearly every page has a widget on it across the Internet these days.

I’d wonder exactly what comScore defines as a widget. Must a widget need to be viewable by the user to be counted? Would script code used in analytics tracking be considered a widget? I still believe that widgets will replace most traditional online display banner advertising by the end of 2009. The benefits of widgetizing an ad far outweight the cost to implement.

Gigya leads the pack serving over 150 million widgets during the period. In the U.S., Gigya served over 55 million widgets, giving them a 29.2% market share. It’s interesting to look at the charts below and compare a widget distribution platform like Gigya with a widget provider like Slide. Gigya doesn’t produce their own widgets, they help widget creators with distribution, monetization and analytics. Slide creates and distributes their own widgets. It’s hard to do a direct comparison.

(comScore asked that we remove the top 10 charts) 

Good to see SplashCast on the list – haven’t heard much from them lately. Check out my thoughts on widget installation and ethics, 2008 widget predictions and all of our widget coverage.

AOL has announced this morning that through their Platform-A online advertising brand, they will bring together buy.at and Goowy Media. buy.at is an affiliate network with partners including Blockbuster and Ticketmaster. Goowy Media provides a widget platform and also powers the yourminis Webtop. This new offering will take the buy.at network and Goowy’s technology to create a new set of monetizable widgets that publishers can place on their Web sites and blogs.

The first company to use the new affiliate widget setup is Ticketmaster. The widget is named "EventEngine" and will allow for customization of specific events.

AOL acquired Goowy in February of 2008 and buy.at also in early 2008. I still believes that widgets will change the advertising landscape this year.

Last night we wrote about the new set of embeddable widgets that video streaming service Hulu has launched. It sure seems like the widgets load very slowly. While watching the widget load, I noticed that they are grabbing data and pushing it to Omniture’s tracking beacon. This is the same beacon we wrote about with regards to Adobe and their potential spyware.

There’s nothing in the Hulu privacy policy regarding the widgets and any sort of tracking. There’s also no notice of tracking on the Hulu widget page. Should there be? And more importantly, should I as the person embedding the widgets understand what it is that Hulu is tracking? Trust me, I am a tracking freak so I understand the need for Hulu to understand how and where their widgets are being used. But I’d also like to see some transparency regarding what it is that they are tracking. How can I be assured that they aren’t tracking items outside of their widget? What information isbeing passed back to Hulu from my site and more importantly, my site visitors.

I’d like to see Hulu create a checkbox that the person lifting the widget has agreed to the terms of the widget which must include what it is that Hulu is tracking.

This is a simple example of a topic which will need to be discussed as an industry at some point in the very near future. Are all widgets considered a form of advertising and ad-based rules apply? When I embed a widget on my site, what responsibilities do I and the widget source have in communicating privacy and terms with regards to the widget(s)?

NewTeeVee and Techcrunch are reporting tonight on the launch of a set of embeddable widgets from Hulu. Hulu CTO Eric Feng and Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington sat down at the Techcrunch house for an interview. During the interview, Feng discusses the launch of a set of embeddable widgets. I have enjoyed using the Hulu service since their launch – it’s also growing quite well in terms of traffic and video views.

I’ve written about widgets before, spoken on panels about widgets and believe that widgets will change the advertising landscape over the next year or so. From my perspective, the Hulu widgets provide little to no real value and I don’t see why a content publisher (blog, MySpace profile, whatever) would embed these widgets.

The "Hulu’s Show & Movie Widget" which I’ve embedded below forces a user away from the content site to Hulu to watch the video. It’s a bit odd considering they allow embedding the shows online and how Feng talks about hyper distribution as the model Hulu is striving for. I’d prefer to see the ability to view the video directly inside or that the widget expands to view the show. If Hulu could provide this type of widget, it would be a real winner for Hulu, the video viewer and the content site owner. If you take their full, non-customizable widget, it will play the video inside the widget. But anyone who will want to embed a Hulu widget into their site or blog, will want their favorite or related shows in the embed (like Michael did with the DailyShow).

On the flip side, this is a great marketing play – if they can get users to embed the widgets, the users will provide Hulu with all the free marketing they could ever want – even while providing no value to the site that embeds the widget. Feng says Hulu is open to feedback on the widgets – so there’s my feedback – make all of the widgets play inside of the widget for maximum effectiveness.

Central Pennsylvania-based video hosting service Viddler has announced the launch of Vidgets today. Vidgets are widgets using videos hosted by Viddler. Viddler describes Vidgets as, "With Vidgets you can create lists of videos using any Viddler username, a tag on Viddler, a combination of the two, featured videos, popular videos here on Viddler."

Creating a Vidget is pretty easy although the code doesn’t show up until you hit preview which is in another colum – bit odd on the usability. Below is a Vidget I made by searching for iPhone videos featuring iJustine. It’s a "list" Vidget – there are also playlist and reel Vidgets.

What would be interesting to know is if the vidgets are automatically updated as new content that matches your selections is added to Viddler. Also it would be great if you could order the videos as you prefer. For example, I may want the video placed in the 3rd position to actually show up first. Would give the Vidget more of a storyline.

Considering that the Vidget code combines HTML and the Flash Viddler player, they are missing a golden opportunity for some heavy search engine optimization! Why not slap a simple "This Vidget Built By Viddler" or "XYZ Vidget Built By Viddler". All of the cool kids are doing it – see Scribd or Docstoc for good examples.

Update: Matt Marshall has a good analysis piece regarding the Glam Developer Platform announcement.

Glam Media is announcing the launch of a platform today. Codenamed Atako, the goal is to offer a set of widgets and applications that can be monetized and also offer additional options for Glam network publishers. The new platform is codenamed Atako which Glam describes as, "signify the deep passion that application developers and users feel when they are working with technology that creates change."

The platform is open and Glam will allow developers to build applications for their network of content publishers. Seeing as the women’s demographic is one of the "richest" online in terms of online advertising effectiveness, this could be a huge win for developers overall. The Glam Media Atako platform follows platforms by most of the major social networking providers including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Glam goes after Facebook by noting that their platform isn’t a walled garden — that is, the applications and widgets on Atako are open.

Developers and publishers will share in the revenue generated by their widgets and applications.

The Atako platform is currently in private beta for both developers and publishers. Glam Media reports 77 million monthly uniques across their network of sites and blogs. Check out all of our Glam Media coverage.