Sexy Widget

My Intro from SFNewTech's Widget Event Last Month

Here's a video of my intro at the sold out Widgets up the Wazoo event put on last month by SFNewTech.  We're planning a follow up event for August... if you run widget related business and are interested in being on the panel, please send me a note.

Catching up with Widgetbox

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with Sequoia backed widget company Widgetbox. To be honest, I’ve never really understood where exactly they fit into the widget ecosystem, as they seem to do a bit of everything.

In speaking to newish CEO Will Price and Senior Director of BizDev Tracy Pizzo, it sounds as if they’ve tightened their focus a bit.

Will Price started off our call by taking a shot at explaining his view of the widget ecosystem. Widgetbox’s view of the landscape of widget companies goes something like this:

The Widget Publishers – these are the hit makers, the Slides and the RockYous of the world who are out to develop their own hit widgets and apps, and run ads across the top.

The White Label Platforms – the big players here are Clearspring and Gigya. As Price describes them, these are the infrastructure players – the guys providing white label tools to big publishers.

The Publishing Tools – This is a newish category of players that I’ve noted as one of my areas to watch – companies like SproutBuilder, Gydget, and the newly launched iWidgets. These are the folks who are building tools that allow enterprises and individuals build and publish their own widgets.

So where does Widgetbox fit into this? Price considers Widgetbox a branded widget promotion / launch network (Nabbr also falls into this category) with a couple of key assets. First and foremost is the Widgetbox gallery, which I’ve long considered the finest in the biz. Price made a point of stressing the SEO power of his gallery – a widget that is included in the gallery will often show up first for its keyword on Google within 24 hours.

(I was skeptical that users are searching for the keyword “widget” but Price assured me that they are)

So while the widget infrastructure guys will provide the publisher with tools (e.g. Add to Facebook!) buttons to distribute a widget, Widgetbox emphasizes inclusion in its gallery as a differentiator.

Where Widgetbox would seem to compete directly with Clearspring and Gigya is in the area of paid installs. Widgetbox powered widgets that are pulled by consumers from the Widgetbox gallery and embedded into the wild become part of the Widgetbox footprint. Widgetbox can then overlay widget promotion campaigns on that footprint – which sounds to me a lot like what Clearspring and Gigya’s ad networks are offering. Price made a point of stressing that Widgetbox was primarily focused on CPA campaigns (e.g. Pay Per Install) as opposed to CPM.

I came away from our call with a clear understanding of what Widgetbox is trying to do, though I’m not sure if there are clear bright lines between the segments as Price described them. For example, I’m pretty sure that Gigya and Clearspring would both very much see themselves as widget promotion networks. I specifically asked Price how he expected to compete with Clearspring’s reach when Clearspring is powering widgets for big media companies like RockYou and the NBA while Widgetbox seems to be powering smaller widget developers. Price’s response was to suggest that the infrastructure providers will have a difficult time promoting across their network without competing with their big brand clients. In other words, while the widget infrastructure providers do have massive reach, how much of that reach is monetizable beyond whatever revenue is being earned from analytics? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Here are a couple of other random notes from our conversation:

- Widgetbox does not run ads on Widgetbox.com
- Widgetbox is experimenting with cross widget promotion (promoting widgets on related widgets)
- There are free and paid promotion opportunities on Widgetbox.com
- They see the lack of IAB standards as a major hurdle in the industry begins to monetize
- They have no plans to become a white label infrastructure provider – their brand is a core part of their strategy

And here are some stats:

- 70K+ widgets in their gallery
- 65K widget creators represented
- Widgetbox widgets sit on 857K domains (MySpace and FB count as one domain each)
- 70% of their widgets are active in any given week

NewsGator's Widget Publishing Tool

There are fewer RSS to Widget conversion tools than you would think.  MuseStorm has one, but they're moving in another direction.  I don't believe ClearSpring has one.  Widgetbox has one in their "Blidget" tool.

And now, I was just alerted to NewsGator's widget publishing tool that allows you to convert RSS feeds to custom widgets.  NewsGator claims that they're closing in on their one billionth widget served. 
Apparently you can build your own widget design (or choose from some existing templates), combine multiple feeds, and build headline focused widgets targeting specific content.

Here's an example widget that I built from my RSS feed of RateItAll Reviews.

Highlights from WidgetWebExpo

Here are my highlights from WidgetWebExpo from earlier this week:

• Debating the importance / likelihood of data portability with Chris Saad and Khris Loux
• Debating hub & spoke with Khris Loux
• Clearspring CEO Hooman Radfar's "History of the World of Widgets" keynote - presentation here.
• Hearing about Nabbr over beers from fired up CTO Bill Cromie
• Enjoying the sweet (but accurate) irony of my friend Carnet Williams of the self promotion tool SproutBuilder describing Web 3.0 as the era of self promotion
• Hearing Fred Wilson talk live and in person about a future of widgets that is in the river and out of the sidebar
• Hearing Fred Wilson explain the case against social graph portability - that each community is different, and to get real value you need to take the time to build the appropriate network for the community
  
• Meeting Ivan Pope
• Hitting some very cool New York bars: Sweet and Vicious and Max Fish, where our group had three separate pizza deliveries
• Seeing Jonathan Mendez of Ramp Digital present the results of a very cool widget ad campaign run by Dockers
• The fact that there was someone there from CDC there learning about how to virally spread information to contain diseases!  Awesome!
• Catching up with SEO to widget crossover guru Patrick Sexton
  
• Talking to numerous fired up entrepreneurs about the cool shit they are working on - like WidgetLocker, AllHipHop, AmnestyWidgets, and more.
  

My Notes from Fred Wilson's Keynote at WidgetWebExpo

One of the primary reasons that I made the trek to New York for WidgetWebExpo was to catch Fred Wilson's keynote. 

Fred kept it pretty simple - his main emphasis was that widgets, as they have existed from 2005-2007, are on the way out.  That users - especially those younger than 28 - like to consume content in a river format (twitter, friendfeed, fb news feed, tumblr, etc.).  That the clutter, performance hit, and content separation caused by loading widgets into a sidebar does not make for an optimal consumption experience.

Here are my verbatim notes from the keynote (written as Fred was speaking.)  Please excuse typos.

Why Widget is the wrong word and why it matters

In the computer world widgets are the objects you interact with on a computer screen.

A web widget is a portable chunk of code than can be exported and executed.

I think the way we use the word widgets is wrong.

Flickr badge is the first widget I ever used (2005).

Eye opening.  Had a Flickr page, and had a blog.  Could not introduce each to each other’s audiences.  By adding a badge, developed interaction between the two communities.  Folks would click through.  This got me thinking up about mashing up web pages.

MyBlogLog the most interesting widget I ever used.  I realized then that widgets were more than just showing content…. but introducing new functionality.  My blog had become a (lightweight) social network.

Tried to invest, had a signed agreement, but before we could execute, they sold to Yahoo.  I don’t think they realized the potential of what MyBlogLog could become.

Favorite widget: music widget hacked by Darren (reader of blog and tumblog), song of the day widget.

Autoplay checkbox…. Will play the whole chronology.  You can also skip through songs.

Now, I can stop posting mp3’s to blog – just post to tumblog.  Very helpful.

What is content and what is an ad?  Shows google ads in margin.  We are getting trained by G and others about what is content and what is an ad.

Right side is ads, left side is content.

This notion of separation between content and ads is common.  On my blog, content is in the middle, and left and right margins are widgets and ads.

Three times I’ve gone through process of cleaning out my widgets. 

Widgets slow down pages.  It takes 25 seconds for avc.blogs.com to load.  Fast loading is a requirement for a successful web service.

Tumblog – no sidebars.  Content is delivered inline.  In Tumblog, maybe they wouldn’t be called widgets.  Last.FM music stream post as an example of an inline widget.

I am enamored with the concept of flow / river.  People want to consume in a flow that is controlled by them.  A river of news, a river of photography, is a more compelling experience than the separation of content and widgets on avc.blogs.com

The challenge for widget builders is to figure out how to get the content into the flow, as opposed to onto the page.

Questions: no os for widgets – to terminate processes that aren’t loading.

Fred: a company was working on this but I don't remember who.

Fred: Pending FB redesign: apps coming off the profile page by default is directionally similar to the river mentality.  Apps shouldn't automatically show up on profile.

First generation of widget economy was powerful because it showed you could mash up multiple services on the same page.  But the UI to do this is not ideal.  Lots of work to do to make it work better.  Widgets shouldn’t suck.

Reality of RSS – we will never get higher than 10-15% of folks consuming blog content via RSS readers.  Same is true for FriendFeed.

Power of feeds is to move content around to the people who want it when they want it.

When you look at the leading edge of innovation, you need to look where the money is.  For example, IT innovations happen on wall street because they can afford to try different stuff.

On the web, it’s in advertising.  The most interesting behavioral algos are in the advertising sector – quigo, google, tacoda, etc.

All of these technologies will be merged – an ad unit will targeted at you based on your personal trail.  It will happen first in advertising, but then it will get to personal publishing.  Contextual inline widgets, with a personalized river for everybody.

I don’t use an RSS reader.  Too much on the web.  If it’s newsworthy, it will find me via the tools I use. 

Question: how do you see Google Friend Connect socializing widgets.

It won't be as simple as dropping a MyBlogLog like widget into the page.  Relationships have context - my Etsy friends are in the context of Etsy.

Debate: are social networks portable across services.  Google Friend Connect will give me more control over my social graph.  But, you still must put the work into each social network to create the right contextually relevant social graph. 

Widgets not necessarily monetizable, but the web services behind them are. 

Engagement of widgets is what matters.  Who’s clicking and doing what.

If you take out the wall apps, the most successful apps are games.  Zynga – 2M people per day playing.  12% of monthly reach of FB.  Everything should have a game dynamic.

We need to design widgets in a way that drives more engagement.

Seeqpod's Embeddable, Playable Search Results

I'm messing around with Seeqpod - it lets you search for media, play the media from the search results, set up playlists of that media, and embed it.  Like this.  Note the audio and video tabs.

SeeqPod - Playable Search

The Evolution of the Widget Related Business

I began writing Sexy Widget in September, 2006, and have been following widgets and distributed business models closely for a while before that.

In this time, I’ve noticed that certain types of widget related companies have come in waves. 

First were the content widget companies – innovators such as RockYou and YouTube that noticed very early how folks on MySpace took advantage of the social networking site’s exposed templates to express themselves.  RockYou (known then as RockMySpace) launched what is widely considered the first consumer facing web widget in November, 2005.  YouTube followed with their embeddable Flash player shortly after that.

Following the content widgets were the widget galleries.  Services such as Widgetbox and Snipperoo moved to provide consumers with a central directory to find all different sorts of widgets.  A blog called Widgetoko launched around the same time with a gallery like focus.

Around the same time as the widget galleries, the widget platforms emerged.  With all of these widgets proliferating around the Web, there needed to be better tools to manage, track, and enable optimized distribution of these widgets.  This is when companies like Clearspring and MuseStorm emerged, and then later, Gigya.  Widgetbox also offers some of these services.

As the best of the content widgets and widget platforms continue to thrive and grow and raise big rounds, I am now seeing a couple of new trends in widget related businesses:

First is the rise of what I call Widget Publishing Tools.  These are services such as SproutBuilder, Gydget, Goldmail, Wix, Zembly, iWidgets and more.  MuseStorm also seems to be moving in this direction as well, and Widgetbox offers a build your own Facebook App.  These are services that provide robust publishing tools that allow non-programmers to build widgets that previously only could have been developed by programmers.  In addition to basic formatting and distribution tools, these services offer ways to mash up feeds of other web services in order to output a truly unique offering.

Some of these companies like Wix and SproutBuilder are building consumer facing tools.  Others, such as Gydget, GoldMail, and MuseStorm, are offering these services to enterprises or individual clients.

The second major theme that I am seeing now is the emergence of what I call Feature Widgets.  These are cross domain, full featured applications that provide a single user experience across multiple domains.  The first well known example of this sort of widget is probably MyBlogLog (visual analytics).  Current examples of this sort of company include Disqus (blog commenting), Tangler (forums), Shelfari (books), and RateItAll (consumer reviews).

I am conscious that there is not a bright line that exists between these various segments.  Clearspring, Widgetbox, and Gigya all seem to be expanding somewhat from their platform focus, and seem to be willing to try different things to increase their reach.

However, there are big trends afoot here.  I’ve written repeatedly (here, here, here) about the opportunity I perceive for companies to provide winner take all cross domain features.  And the provision of tools that allow non programmers to do programmer like things is part of how I see “Web 3.0.:

Over the coming days and weeks, I hope to profile some of the more interesting companies in the widget publishing and widget feature spaces.

RockYou Raises $35M

RockYou has joined Clearspring and Slide as widget companies raising huge rounds of funding.  It's interesting to me that each of these companies continue to up the ante, as opposed to taking exits.  The biggest widget companies appear to be thinking very, very big indeed.

Here's a quote from the press release:

(San Mateo, CA- June 9, 2008,) RockYou, a pioneer in widget development and the leading developer and distributor of social applications on the social web, announced today it has closed a Series C funding round of $35 million led by DCM. Several private investors also participated in the round.

The funding will enable the company to grow its team, increase its advertising and publisher offerings, and expand its portfolio of social applications. Today, RockYou can be found on major social networks, including MySpace, hi5, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster and more. RockYou’s network reaches 87.5M monthly uniques with 2.7 billion page views. The company has embraced the OpenSocial standard and has taken the lead with over 10 million installs across hi5, MySpace and Orkut.