Homepage Widgets Panel at WidgetsLive: How Start Pages are Evolving
This WidgetsLive panel featured Adam Sah from Google Personalized Homepage, Sanaz Ahari from Microsoft's Live.com, and Tariq Krim from Netvibes. After the usual product intros, the panel got more interesting with conversations steered by Niall Kennedy (the moderator).
Niall started by asking about monetization. Sanaz said that being a homepage for Microsoft properties is key for them, rather than making money as a standalone product by advertising. Adam said it's similar at Google and they want to drive traffic to their properties via the start page.
In terms of how they're driving users to their start pages, Tariq said that their growth is viral. Sanaz said that for Microsoft, giving users the choice of lots of content and pointing them to directories is important - which gives live.com utility for users. Adam said that Google tries "not to play favorites" [with the widgets they display] and they want to enable discovery - like in search.
Niall asked whether businesses can 'buy' their way onto the homepage lists. Adam said no and that they try to find ways to rank gadgets - making the good ones bubble to the top. Sanaz said that Microsoft has been playing around with a few models - the directory, the gallery ("our community"), and thirdly the Web (user adds their own modules, via search etc). She said they're "in a learning phase", so Microsoft is still experimenting.
Niall mentioned that widgets interacting with each other is important. Tariq said they need to figure out how widgets communicate with each other - and standardize that. He said a new business model may evolve once the industry has achieved that. Sanaz said that for start.com and then live.com, that was the main driver - but the main issue for them is security, which needs to be scalable. Adam said "it's possible to do inter-gadget communication", but he says there's been little demand from users so far. He hasn't seen many gadgets that achieve this.
Finally Niall asked the panel whether the start page is a jump-off page for users, or one where users will stick around. Sanaz said it's a combination of both - and that some users spend a high amount of time on live.com. Tariq said that start pages are evolving towards creating "a longer term relationship with the user". Speaking of which... I spoke to Tariq earlier today in the hallways and he told me that productivity is a key theme going forward for Netvibes. I interpreted this to mean he wants people to do things and run apps from within Netvibes, not just use it as a 'start page' to jump off to other sites.
Interesting panel and the differences between the three services was noticeable. Netvibes (and other independents like Pageflakes and Webwag) need to find a way to monetize their services, but Microsoft and Google have the luxury of not needing to worry about that. But also you can see the cultures of both Microsoft and Google show through in their start pages - Microsoft wants to use it as a homepage for their properties (including search) and a directory; whereas Google is more focused on searching and ranking widgets (although to be fair, they also obviously want to drive traffic to their properties). But for all these companies, I'm expecting start pages to evolve more to one where widgets can interact and also communicate with non-PC apps (like TV or mobile) - and also become more like productivity tools, as Tariq said.
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We would have to agree that productivity is key. However, extensibility is also right up there at the top of the list. Start pages and environments that utilize widgets should be agnostic with regard to the applications ("modules" and "widgets") that are running on them and from where they are running. This gives users and developers the greatest amount of flexibility in terms of enhancing the productivity and usefulness of these sites.
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Very interesting article.
At the WebOSapi group (Union of Samedesk, EyeOS, Xin, ORCA, Fenestela, YouOS, Challenger, Winlike, DALB, Forcewebs) we are working with some of the same idears, however - this is more focused on Online Applications and not so much on "small" widgets - but in technology, its still the same boundaries to work with.
on the comming ORCAA startpage (a Hybird of the common Web 2.0 startpage, and the larger technology websites like ORCA Desktop - www.orcadesktop.com (A complete desktop interface in a browser) - we are testing idears with a hybrid of Widgets and Online Applications.
A pre. demo of this can be found at : http://start.orcadesktop.com
Unlike Google, we strive just to give the user access to the tools/options - when and where he/she needs it.
I would like to hear if there is anyone else out there who have been working with the same idears.
With Kind Regards
Leon Bollerup
Lead Devleoper
Team ORCA - www.orcadesktop.com
your last remark, richard, sounds like a manifesto for the very web2.0 overhaul we've just done of Orb (public beta next week at orb.com, currently available from http://orb.com/getorb2)
we figure the right mix of AJAX widgety goodness and the sort of power you can build into the browser (in our case, not so much productivity as entertainment and media management) is to go with a homepage that's effectively your "quick-picks" from stuff deeper down in the webapps, which are radically different in interface (more like WMP11) and a click away from the widgets
with mobile being a user-defined slice of quick-launches and capabilities from the PC experience & ultimately with the user choosing between media playback within a Flash player right in the interface or in a standalone local player of whatever type they prefer (again, maximizing the user-determined aspect of the experience triggerable from the widgets)