Widgets Aren’t the Thing

Widgets aren’t the thing. Distributed content, yes. ways of getting people to import and export without having to go through any specific website, sure. But widgets, per se? Nah. That’s in a sense what VC Fred Wilson (above) thinks. Fred talked about a “river” of content, in a stream, as on his Tumblr, without any sidebars, or widgets that disrupt and are disjointed and can easily be ignored in sidebars, not to mention greatly slow the loading of the page. Event organizer Matthew Finley told me privately that maybe widgets aren't the right thing to hang this conference on, that maybe next year (the second, which he hopes will make a profit), they'll expand or better position it to include the larger message of what this is.

I like the idea that someone can get only what they want -- perhaps Fred’s musings on financials, without his musical selections. Different tastes, and the ultimate “widgetization” of content, to where I can say give me this of this person and that of that blog, and assemble it for me as I want. Maybe I WANT to be able to ignore something most days, but know it’s there when I want to glance.

Fred calls this “The Implicit Web,” and it’s something you don’t have to even ask for. A user’s action and behaviors “should inform the browser as to what services to call up.”I should have a different experience when he comes to his blog than you, and should be what the Web collectively knows about me, vs. you.

I interviewed Fred and Stowe Boyd on tape, and hope to have it soon. Also, Fred’s keynote. One striking thing Fred said: “A friend named Darren whom I’ve never met” who did a widget mashup for him. One of the striking things he didn't talk about: money. For a VC, he seems rather unconcerned with making revenues from this stuff.

Playing with Widgets

Playful. That theme came up at least three times today at the Widget Web Expo in Brooklyn. (It was there, said the event organizer, because space was hard to come by in Manhattan.)

VC Fred Wilson: “The Web is becoming more intelligent, social, mobile and playful. Playful is very important.” Stowe Boyd: General Motors did very well and showed courage by letting people mash up videos of its SUVs, even though many were critical. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they made fun of themselves?” he asked, suggesting they, maybe, let users show how to shrink the cars? “Playfulness is another part of the courage thing.” Patrick Sexton of SEOish.com was nothing but playful, showing excitedly (after his formal remarks) how he’d widgetized a half-dozen pieces of Stephen Colbert-related content to get the attention of the execs at Comedy Central’s parent, Viacom (he did, he said).

OK, then, let’s play. Serious fun. Jon Stewart’s news is more honest than the “real” shows. David Pogue creates a fake musical to the iPhone. Hey, if a comedian can play a journalist, how about the reverse. One of my attempts is in the first part of this video interview with Dave Morgan. Another attempt, that will grow and get better is here. I used to be a comedian. So, now I'm a former comedian, who's now a journalist, doing some comedic stuff.

Who predicted the end of irony? Right.

Revenue from Widgets

Yesterday, at WidgetCon , there wasn't agreement on what a widget is (Must it be a distributed application, or can it reside on a desktop? Must it be fully interactive, and forwardable?). But a common strain was that publishers are struggling to find revenue models that work even as marketers struggle to figure out the new technology.

There was lots of talk about how typical reach and frequency measures don't work.

"With traditional media, whether you're buying a piece of print or a homepage takeover on MySpace or whatever it is, it's very static, it's somewhat linear, it's got a beginning, and you buy an audience you buy impressions," said Chad Stoller, Executive Director, Emerging Platforms, for Organic.

"I don't envy the position of a sort of junior media buyer who has to figure out how to force fit [a widget] into a flow chart or into an I/O," he said. "It doesn't have an explicit end to it, it doesn't have a specific beginning to it. It just grows like a weed, and marketers aren't used to having things that are undefined and that are very blurry and aren't entirely accountable."

Some, though, are trying to fit widgets into typical ad models. Widgetbox CEO Ed Anuff proudly showed off a suite of Forbes.com widgets with ads embedded that both partners announced Tuesday. Anuff said the ads were not only dynamically generated, but also tracked through ad servers.

And along with the ads, there was discussion about tracking. As the prominence of the pageview is lessened in favor of "user engagement," Web traffic trackers like Nielsen/NetRatings and comScore have been looking for other means to take applications like widgets into account. ComScore, which was at the conference, began compiling widget data this spring, and today privately shared information that showed widgets are exploding, growing from 170 million views in April to 220 million in May. In May, comScore says, there were 80.8 million widget viewers in the U.S., and widgets they reached 45.5 percent of Web users.

Making Widgets Work

Attended WidgetCon today, said to be the first-ever conference devoted solely to Web widgets. Was fun to see Steve Rubel (above) show a picture of a T-shirt that said "Every time you say Web 3.0 a startup dies :( ", and also fun to ask him what he thought about whether PC mag should have widgets. (He graciously laughed, and then said they do well with that kind of technology but need to be more open, more of a vertical portal, showing others' relevant content, too.) He also gave tips for what widgets, or distributed content, has to be in this day and age, including open, shared, fitting into any platform or device users want, and so on. Pretty standard. More guidance here, and on widgets for the Nokia cellphone. Also on new Web page-making WYSIWIG technology from Freewebs, which hosted WidgetCon.

I asked Chris Cunningham, head of sales for Freewebs, why the heck we even need a conference for widgets, which he, himself, noted are far from well-known in a joking video of himself on the streets of New York asking confused people about the Web apps while supposedly trying to find his way to the conference. (Widgets, if you need to know, are generally little applications you can use to paste into your Web page that sort of form a Web page within your page. They can display videos, or calendars, or voting applications, or thousands of other things. Very big on Facebook right now, as well as iGoogle and being experimented with on Yahoo.) Chris talked about how all the excitement last year at this time was about video, especially YouTube, but that media buyers are still wondering how to buy ads on YouTube. So, he wanted to be "ahead of the curve" for widgets, and work now to get revenue models and sales ideas in place.

There was lots of talk about whether and how widgets can make money. (Forbes.com yesterday announced widgets with ads. They were created by Widgetbox, which was at the conferene.) There will probably be more on this for Jack Myers Media Business report on MediaVillage.com, and perhaps on PaidContent.org.