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.
