Succumbing to Vallewag's Widget Linkbait

In unusually heavy handed fashion, Nick Denton at Valleywag has drawn some dramatic conclusions about widgets from the recent MySpace / Photobucket dust-up:

There is a broader lesson. There are relatively few opportunities to create web brands as powerful as Myspace or Facebook, the two leading social networks. Also-ran sites tend, rather than simply folding, to piggyback on these standalone sites. In the best case, this can be an efficient marketing tactic. After all, Google grew by providing search for Yahoo users; by the time Yahoo switched off the Mountain View search engine, it was way too strong to stop.

But that's the exception. Most of these smaller products remain dependent: they can persuade themselves that they're spreading, cunningly, virally, through other sites; they can define themselves as a movement; predict web functionality will be distributed, and reassembled; that the standalone website is over; they can even attend conferences with fellow "widget" makers to make themselves feel like part of a movement. But that's simply the rationalization of failure: the only real power, on the web as in traditional media, is to control distribution, or a brand so powerful that consumers insist on it. If Photobucket can't face down Myspace, there isn't much hope for the myriad other widget companies with a fraction of its user base.

There’s a level of animosity in here that I’m not sure I understand.

From a marketing perspective, widgets are one channel among several that a website publisher has at his disposal.  There’s paid advertising, there’s SEO, there’s partnerships, there’s word of mouth, etc.  One of the many fascinating aspects of widgets as a marketing channel is that they are delivered consumer to consumer, bringing an added element of trust to your content / message / app.  To be blunt, widgets are a marketing channel that is being embraced by the consumer.   This is what has marketers excited.

But that’s not all.  While it’s difficult to monetize a widget itself, a well executed widget can deliver a tremendous ROI in terms of branding, content acquisition, backlinks, new registrations, and click-throughs.  Would you rather pay $20 for a thousand impressions on a third party site, or $0 for a thousand impressions?  That widgets can deliver a fabulous return on your marketing dollar is not debatable.

In some cases, an exceptionally well executed widget can deliver an exit.  YouTube, MyBlogLog, and Quizilla are examples.

So why the animosity?  Why the characterization of widget publishers as a bunch of self-deceiving also-rans?

Where Nick gets especially theatrical is with this “rationalization of failure,” stuff.  That widgets are somehow a tactic of those sites who are unable to cut it as destinations.  To me, this sounds a bit like that idiotic meme that was floating around Silicon Valley in which Web 2.0 fundamentalists were saying “if you have to advertise, you’re doing something wrong.”

This is horseshit.  If you’re a website publisher that’s not taking full advantage of the marketing channels available to you, you’re doing something wrong.  If you convince yourself, as Nick suggests, that widgets are for weaklings and also-rans, you are pointlessly closing a channel, and again, doing something wrong.  You have an obligation to your investors / stakeholders to do everything in your power to increase your site’s reach.  Hype is not a reason to adopt a channel, but it certainly isn’t a reason to dismiss one either.

Another point that Nick ignores in his widget bashing is the role that widgets played in putting MySpace in the position of power that he describes.  To me, it seems disingenuous to salute MySpace’s control over content distribution, without at least acknowledging the role that MySpace’s acceptance of widgets had in giving them that power.

I don’t want to turn this into some partisan fight about the value of widgets.  Nick raises a number good, albeit obvious, points that widget publishers should take note of.  The vulnerability of being overly dependent on a single channel, the advantages of having control of distribution, and the dangers of hyping a marketing channel as a panacea.

But equating widgets with the “rationalization of failure” is nothing more than overly dramatic linkbait.  Enjoy my PR4 link, Nick.

 

Comments

[Eric Marcoullier]

I may be overgeneralizing here, but Nick and Gawker are patient zero for a small trend in the Web 2 world -- blogs that grow big enough to aspire to become traditional media companies.

The challenge is that in order to make the switch, one needs to jettison everything that made the site successful in the first place. Blogs are all about linking to outside sources while media companies trap people in the site.

If Nick is serious about turning his group of blogs into a media group, he needs to reconcile the two notions and I think that the widgets are the first thing to get the mental heave ho. Widgets in his mind stop being a service for his readers and become a dangerous siphons -- ads piggybacking on his wobbly network.

It will be interesting to see if he comes out against outbound links later this year.

[lawrence]

Eric, that's an interesting theory. Valleywag certainly has some of the tightest commenting restrictions of any Web 2.0 blog. I don't think it would be ridiculous to see this is a reflection of Nick Denton's appreciation of the importance of control over content distribution.