The Equity Kicker - Latest Comments in Widgets – some straight talking

Re: Widgets – some straight talking

alan patrick — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:13:50 -0000

Widgets remind me of web 1.0 shareware and freeware.

Re: Widgets – some straight talking

mspoke — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:08:43 -0000

Scott, when you say 'Some smart kid will write a blog and/or social network platform that consists entirely of widgets."

You mean something like http://www.yourminis.com or for an crude example of how this can look http://yourminis.com/mc1

You mean like that? I think this area has a lot of potential. Kids will use these things like badges of honour if the right content is available.

Re: Widgets – some straight talking

Erik — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:13:58 -0000

I think that widgets will become increasingly sophisticated and that customized widget developers will emerge to serve the needs for big media marketing widgets. Say for example a widget promoting the upcoming film "Transformers" that when clicked on transformed/morphed from a poll widget into a full fledged media player showing the movie trailer. The New York Times article entitled "Bling for your Blog" is an insightful title because I think there will be a new phenomenon of "must have" widgets that will create incredible online buzz.

Speaking of poll widgets, CBS Marketwatch mentioned that site owners can share revenue on poll widgets on their sites. This is important for sites that are highly specialized with high traffic that pollsters would covet.

On a side note, the increasing movement of the us population to drop their land lines and use their cell only could lead more polling services to the web rather than the traditional phone surveys.

Lastly, there will be room for more narrowly focused widget warehouses as thousands of widgets will be created and filtering them all will require topic specific widget category websites.

Ex: PlaylistWidgets.com, etc

Re: Widgets – some straight talking

nic — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 10:14:55 -0000

Thanks Scott, and congrats on the Yahoo! deal.

The idea of "widget as data gatherer" is a good one.

Re: Widgets – some straight talking

Scott Rafer — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:36:17 -0000

I think that you are missing at least one model. Simply gathering profile data, either for sale or for use elsewhere, is worth money. As one example, per Seth's post last night http://majestic.typepad.com... , behavioral ad networks are going to need to revenue share back to their targets consumers. A network consisting of "only" ads and profile widgets might work quite well. It's reasonable to note that most ad networks require javascript installation, putting all the ad networks in the widget business already.

Ivan's predictions do cover this point:
A Widgetized social network or blog will be launched and become hugely successful

* Some smart kid will write a blog and/or social network platform that consists entirely of widgets. You create an interface by choosing which parts to put where. Suddenly you are in total control of your platform.

Re: Widgets – some straight talking

nic — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 08:10:35 -0000

Good point Simon. I could see myself paying a small amount for the MyBlogLog widget for example.

Re: Widgets – some straight talking

Simon Cast — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 07:44:59 -0000

I can see an opportunity for data providers with valuable data to charge for the delivery of data via a widget for inclusion in websites.

Something along the lines of realtime share price graph delivered from NASDAQ to a companies homepage as a widget. For the right price I could see people paying for these "premium" widgets. But I agree with you a pure play widget company is unsustainable.