Fox Interactive has just announced Spring Widgets - a widget platform designed to tie the various Fox Interactive Web properties together. This announcement was made at the Widgets Live conference. My review of the Springbox RSS reader is here.
The key points of this announcement are as follows:
- The mission of this project was at Ross Levinsohn's request to build a horizontal platform that ties all of the Fox Interactive properties together (MySpace, GameSpy, IGN, etc.)
- The core development was done by the team from Sidereous (sp?) - a development team that was purchased by FIM in 2005
- Web widgets can be dragged to desktop, triggering a download, enabling users to interact with your content even when they are not online
- Third party developers can submit widgets
- SDK / API available
Obviously, this a pretty significant piece of news. I asked about how tight the integration would be between MySpace and Spring Widgets (e.g. would there be a link to the Spring Widgets gallery from every MySpace profile page?). The response was that they are working through the technical issues first and will then determine the integration. They have an eye on the safety concerns of their users in terms of downloading and installing third party widgets.
A bigger question is - will MySpace phase out widgets that don't go through the Spring Widgets platform?
More analysis to follow as I digest this.
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