Widget provider JS-Kit has released their latest widget this morning, Score. Score adds a thumbs up/thumbs down-style ratings widget to any page content, and then aggregates the data across the entire web site into an info box that can highlight a site's top content. It can also integrate with JS-Kit's Navigator offering, which pulls ratings data from other JS-Kit widgets into a central location. In effect, that turns any site into a walled Digg-like ratings community, where users can vote up top content that can then be highlighted by site owners.
JS-Kit was founded in 2006 and raised $1.2 million from The Entrepreneurs' Fund 3 last August. The company now offers 5 distinct widget services for web publishers and the Navigator widget that ties them together.
A source tells us that JS-Kit is gearing up to announce a handful of major publisher partnerships in the next few weeks. These partnerships will push out JS-Kit's widgets to over 20 million new users.
What makes JS-Kit's set of widgets -- which also includes comments, polls, and reviews -- really attractive is how easily they integrate into pages. Widgets generally take just a single line of JavaScript code to get up and running, and no sign up in required. If I've done this properly, a JS-Kit Score widget should appear at the bottom of this post and allow you to rate it.
Of course, because this is the only page on ReadWriteWeb that is running a Score widget, it won't have any data on which content is the highest rated site wide. But the ease of installation is what really catches the eye. JS-Kit is building a suite of tools for web publishers that are modular in nature -- pick and choose which you want to use, and they all play nice and integrate with one another via the Navigator.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: JS-Kit Score: Turn Your Site into a Localized Digg.
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This is awesome, I will definitely be integrating this into our blog College Mogul. We're aiming to the "TechCrunch" for college entrepreneurship.
http://www.collegemogul.com
Posted by: Alex Lindahl | April 14, 2008 8:34 AMI have the feeling this looks more like StumbleUpon than digg. It's a cool little tool though. :) Stumbled and dugg, Josh!
Posted by: Mihaela Lica | April 14, 2008 8:44 AMHi Josh,
Thank you for taking the effort to write about our widgets!
If you or your readers have any ideas for improvements of need help installing
the widgets please email me or support@js-kit.com
Be Well,
Khris
http://js-kit.com
khris at js-kit.com
Posted by: Khris | April 14, 2008 8:58 AMGreat short Josh. I always thought that the widget would eventually lead to a more refined tool. Some 3 deep variant where a lot of features are in a small package.
I wrote about KIT a long while back and always like their innovative and simple tools. I hope they have good success.
Always,
Phil
Posted by: Phil Butler | April 14, 2008 9:16 AMFeels right to me. Any forum that reaches a greater population, is a powerful tool. Fighting the good fight has been my intention from the very beginning. This is very good indeed.
Posted by: Maggie | April 14, 2008 9:54 AMThis is a really sweet tool, I especially like that you took the time to embed the function in the post.
Now if only they had one to do that AND submit to major social sites....
Posted by: Wayne Byrne | April 14, 2008 9:59 AMI mailed to js-kit to request this feauture in late february. I'm very happy that they finally added it ^_^
Posted by: SE7EN | April 14, 2008 10:17 AMThis reminds me a lot of BlogRize's toolbar.
It looks really neat though and thanks for integrating it so that we could try it out for ourselves without installing it. I'm tempted to add it to SheGeeks. Why do you tempt me Catone? I just removed a horde of stuff from my site lol
Posted by: Corvida | April 14, 2008 11:27 AM@ Corvida LOL. That was so funny! Josh is spreading viral site widgets lmao. Actually this one is fairly inobtrusive and way useful ..I am still laughing :)
Phil
Posted by: Phil Butler | April 14, 2008 11:45 AMA nice post on a cool widget. I wonder how many more features the developers will be able to add.
Posted by: Rob | April 14, 2008 12:49 PMThis is indeed a great addition to their existing widget. I wrote about them a while ago and I was actually wondering what they'd do next. I was a little critical of their site at the time, but they did a great job at taking suggestions into consideration. I am pretty sure they'll go very far.
Posted by: Alina Popescu | April 14, 2008 8:45 PMThis is going to be a hit with other bloggers, no doubt. Will also be submitting it to SU for others to learn more about, too.
Great idea, great tool!
Posted by: Saboma | April 15, 2008 3:04 AMThanks
Well I think its far from a Localized Digg it's a bit buggy for me. Nice for the beginner, but for a digg clone or functionality go with pligg.
Posted by: TVSpy | April 15, 2008 3:13 AMHi TVspy,
What bug did you find? What reasons do you have to recommend plig over js-kit? Without these answers it's difficult to reply to your comment.
Our services are provided with 100% support. Please email us if you need any help, find a bug, or have suggestions for improvements:
support@js-kit.com
We have over 23,000 web sites successfully using our widgets and hundreds of new sites joining each day. This is a result of our dedication to building world class products and fully supporting out bloggers and web sites.
Thank you for trying JS-Kit widgets!
Khris
JS-Kit
khris at js-kit.com
Posted by: khris | April 15, 2008 8:30 AMKhris, I don't think TVSpy means that he found a bug. I doubt he ever really tested the widget. :) I think it just bugged him. LOL
Also, JS-Kit cannot even be compared with Pligg (which is a content management system that lets users create digg clones). Pligg works pretty much like WordPress - you download a software, upload it on your server, get a theme and customize it and then publish it online where users can create accounts and start submitting content. It takes time and skill to generate a pligg based site, but there are already many online.
About JS-Kit Score - I think what the users don't understand is how this really works and why would they need the widget, aside the "cool aspect." Product announcements are not product reviews and sometimes they don't do justice to a release as they should.
I am a fan of Kit, as you know - and I love the simplicity of the widgets and how they interact with each other. It took me virtually seconds to install Ratings and to customize Navigator. Now that Score is there, I consider it installing it too and customizing Navigator to show all the top rated stories and the hottest topics as well. The positive about Navigator (in my opinion) is that it generates more page views per user - increasing time spent on site, which is always positive. I could even write a full list of reasons why JS-Kit is cool and I don't think that the "thumbs up - thumbs down" resembles digg. It looks more like StumbleUpon to me. ;)
Posted by: Mihaela Lica | April 16, 2008 9:09 AM