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Geekology | 6/12/2008 |
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Welcome to the Widgetsphere!
Got widgets? If you don't, then maybe you should. |
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by Bill Pfleging
First of all, what IS a widget? For those not intimately involved with social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and many others, then you may not know what these little bits of computer code are, but they can still be incredibly useful to you. The online Wiktionary (en.wiktionary.org) describes a widget as a "component of a graphical user interface that the user interacts with." Not the most descriptive definition, I'll admit. Let me clear it up a bit more.
Widgets are essentially small boxes that appear on a page and provide a single use. Google calls them "gadgets" while Yahoo! and most everyone else calls them "widgets," but whatever you call them they are rapidly spreading everywhere. A widget can bring services like local weather, calendar, RSS feeds for anything like a blog or a news source, even video and radio, as well as interactive games, chat, and much more. They can reside on websites, social networking pages, your iGoogle or Yahoo! homepage, and even on your desktop background. They are just about everywhere, or soon will be. If you're still unclear as to what they are, ask a teenager.
They're useful, fun, and actually becoming an important business tool. Widgets have traditionally (if something that's only been around a few years be said to have a "tradition") been used for frivolous reasons. Teens on MySpace, Bebo, Facebook have been the usual widget users, certainly not something used for business. But now, more and more business-oriented sites are finding uses for widgets that break the "fun uses only" mold.
No longer just for simple news headlines, weather bugs, and tiny games, small businesses are using them to raise interest in their products and keep track of interactions with customers. Welcome to the Widgetsphere, where guerilla marketing, innovative promotion, and viral distribution are the Web 2.0 way.
"I'd say widgets are extremely useful, both as marketing tools and as a business tool in general," says Jacqueline Taylor-Adams, marketing consultant and owner of MasterGriot.com, a site devoted to the spoken-word art form. "It would behoove anyone in business to learn how to use them."
One of Taylor-Adams's consultancy projects is BBSValueTour.com, which sports no less than six widgets on the page, offering community chat, blog listings, sample audio downloads, and more. Her own MasterGriot page, however, was widget-free, and I asked her why.
"It depends on what you want to accomplish on each page," said Taylor-Adams. "This one is more for promo and connecting with the community, so I use various widgets to accomplish that."
Another fan of widgets in business is Kelvin Brown, business consultant and owner of KB Enterprises, and he agrees with Taylor-Adams. "You don't want to use a widget on a strictly product site," says Brown, "because it draws attention away from the primary purpose of the site, which should be sales."
"I think it's the future of Web 2.0," says Shara Karasic, community manager at Work.com, and another believer in new uses for widgets. "You need your information no matter where you are, and widgets can make that distribution easy."
Google's customizable homepage, iGoogle, uses widgets the company calls "Google Gadgets" that a savvy coder can make. Google offers video step-by-step instructions that seem easy and well laid out for the code-capable to learn from. But unless you know something about API (Application Programming Interface), HTML, and/or JavaScript code calls, it's not a task for the general non-techie.
"It's a fairly easy process to create a Google Gadget when you follow our instructions," says Heather Spain, spokesperson for corporate communications at Google, "but it's really intended for developers, and not just average users."
Companies are beginning to use widgets for many purposes. For instance, The Billable Hour Company (www.thebillablehour.com) based in Ardsley, New York sells humorous gifts and greeting cards for lawyers and legal professionals, and offers several different widgets for potential customers. One is a legal holidays and events calendar that will remind the user of important dates - and hopefully get them to buy one or more of their products. Knowing their customers, they also offer a Legal Research and Writing Pro blog, bringing advice and related information to anyone working in this area. Many other companies are following the same route, and achieving a significant level of success. Other companies going this route include design firms, real estate brokers, financial services, and many more.
So now, you're probably sitting there ready to use widgets, but stuck on one important question: How do you start using customized widgets, and maybe even building your own, if you aren't a geek? Well, if you have deep pockets, then you can hire a code writer to build your widget. However, they have to be made according to specific code requirements for each Web 2.0 platform, so you're looking at re-coding for each and every platform you'll want your new widget/gadget distributed on. Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, Orkut, LinkedIn, and all the rest have their own code variations.
Or, to keep it real easy, you can just go to Widgetbox.com. The San Francisco-based company has quickly become one of the largest, if not the largest gallery of widgets online, with over 60,000 downloadable widgets and growing fast, with many of the newer ones addressing the business world.
"The small business community is very aggressive about using the new tools," says Widgetbox CEO Will Price. "We think that's where the new business model is going for small and medium businesses."
It's certainly the easiest place to make a widget. Widgetbox offers a free, easy to use widget builder that works with seemingly any and all social vetwork platforms, as well as an extensive FAQ and a responsive support team. Anyone can make a widget for almost any purpose, and then load it into what appears to be any widget-able platform, from Facebook to Wordpress and even as an iGoogle gadget. One extra advantage Widgetbox has over others is the ability to download any widget from any site, then convert it for any other site you want to use it on.
"We support the major web protocols," says Price. "You can do content widgets, streaming audio or video widgets, you name it. Widgets are like the Shetland pony of the online world, they can do pretty much anything a website can do. We also now support widgets on the iPhone."
I tried it myself, and built a video widget that shows Woodstock TV channel 23. Just point your browser to www.widgetbox.com/widget/woodstocktv-billbeau and you can then see it, as well as grab it for your own iGoogle or most social network page - just won't work with MySpace yet, since it's not Flash-based video. But I'm working on that.
I also made one for the blog my wife Minda and I do for our book The Geek Gap (www.geekgap.com) which Widgetbox calls a "blidget." It took maybe three minutes to create a professional looking widget that listed the titles of blog entries, carried the logo picture from the blog, and was complete and ready to distribute. No coding, no API code calls, no HTML/JS, and no geeks required. ++
Bill Pfleging is a computer consultant and technology writer living and working in Woodstock, NY, and is the co-author of "The Geek Gap" (Prometheus Books, 2006) available in all bookstores. Contact him at bill@billsville.com and catch his TV show "Tech Attack!" Wed. at 6pm on Woodstock Cable Access ch.23, or online at www.woodstocktv.org.
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