Widgetbox Releases Blidgets
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
We covered Widgetbox,
the widget market place, in June last year as
well as during its DEMOfall 2006
launch. Today Widgetbox announced a new product called blidgets, which helps bloggers
create a widget that represents their blog.
Widgetbox is an online marketplace that connects widget developers and widget consumers. It acts as a mediator and solves the problem of adapting widgets to different environments, as well as tracking widget usage. For a step-by-step example of how consumers use widgets today, check out our Christmas post. With the introduction of blidgets, Widgetbox moves into widget creation.
So what are these blidgets?
The idea behind blidgets (a short for bl[og w]idgets) is to enable promotion of a blog on web sites, other blogs and social networking destinations like MySpace. A blidget is basically a wrapper around an RSS feed. Here is how it works:
Step 1: Enter the URL of your blog
Step 2: Customize the look and feel of the blidget
Step 3: You are done!
Your blidget now is like any other widget available on Widgetbox. This means that you can deploy it to a number of platforms. My personal favorite is MySpace, because it is non trivial to add widgets there otherwise. It also means that other Widgetbox users can discover and place this widget onto their blogs and profiles.
Are blidgets all that important?
A likely initial reaction to blidgets is that they are nice to have, but not that compelling. Most blogging software, like Wordpress for example, has the ability to embed a raw RSS feed as a widget. It might not look as pretty, but it gets the job done. Also, it is unclear that anyone besides the blogger would be interested in using this widget. Perhaps some die hard fans, but it is not going to be common.
Yet, what Widgetbox has done is important in the grand scheme of pushing the widgetization of the web forward. Widgetbox has started what we believe is going to become a trend - an end-to-end thinking about widgets. In software development terminology it is called a use case, which is an example that illustrates a process flow from start to finish. Widgetbox has recognized that in a marketplace, the producers (of widgets in this case) might also be the consumers. And if this is the case, it does not make sense to have a gap between production of a widget and its deployment. Instead a better approach is to introduce a flow:
Conclusion
With Blidgets, we are nearing the ability to embed and display the bits of our content anywhere and everywhere. Instead of duplicating information, widgets offer a window on existing content. They allow mashing up and recombining data in whatever way makes the most sense based on the context. The old analogy of GUI builders comes to mind. Once the process of creating and displaying the widgets is super easy, we will have succeeded in remixing the web at large.
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The Widgetbox link (3rd word of this post) is wrong.
Posted by: Tiziano | February 1, 2007 2:15 AM
Where is the URL to the page?
Posted by: Jessu | February 1, 2007 2:30 AM
Apologies, fixed the link and also added specific Blidgets link.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | February 1, 2007 3:09 AM
Richard, I think you should look at what Musestorm (http://musestorm.com) are doing with converting RSS feeds into widgets. Difference is, with Musestorm widgets, they can go into any destination without being tied to Widgetbox. If you make a Musestorm RSS widget, you can auto-import it to Snipperoo and other places with one click. This space is interesting, we'll see how it plays out over the next year or so.
Posted by: Ivan Pope | February 1, 2007 3:53 AM
Perhaps it's just my blog, but my blidget doesn't show any recent entries:
http://gamepipe.usc.edu/pamela/testquik.htm
Anyone else had success?
I like the platform portability, but there's not much use to showing a blank widget anywhere.
Posted by: Pamela Fox | February 1, 2007 3:57 AM
Unable to create a blog widget because a system error occured.
Posted by: JaV | February 1, 2007 5:21 AM
@Pamela / @Jav,
It worked for R/WW. Please tell us what blogging software are you using?
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | February 1, 2007 7:17 AM
I'm using PHP Simple Blog, which has an RSS & ATOM feed. I tried with both with same result.
It may be something non-standard with the feed- although Google Reader doesn't have a problem with it.
Click on name for the blog link.
Posted by: Pamela Fox | February 1, 2007 7:40 AM
Apart from the technical aspects it would be interesting to know whar implication the use of such a blidget would have on copyrights. If I'd provide a blidget of my blog would this be a permission to use my content in any other web environment regardless of context?
Or for those who implement a blidget - would they be on the safe side?
Posted by: suzeric | February 1, 2007 8:09 AM
Check out www.yourminis.com - we let you take any of our minis (widgets) and customize them including colors, backgrounds, size, font / font color, transparency, viewing options (ie inline, list, player, etc.).
You can easily add an rss feed for your site into one of our widgets, configure everything about it and post it to your site.
Check out our blog to see some of the recent minis we have released....http://blog.yourminis.com/ - we have many more at www.yourminis.com.
Thanks.
Posted by: alex | February 1, 2007 9:06 AM
Alex, Richard - Thanks for looking at Widgetbox's blidget feature! We're very happy with how it's being adopted in the blogger community so far: hundreds of blidgets were created in the first day alone.
I'm also happy to say that these blidgets are being effective at promoting those blogs: the number of subscribers to those widgets are growing very, very fast. Bloggers can keep track of the spread of their widget on the graphical metrics dashboard that Widgetbox provides for free.
Apart from the comments on this posts, we've heard very few reports of problems. We have a dedicated support staff and respond promptly to every incident.
Posted by: Dean Moses | February 1, 2007 10:39 AM
MuseStorm provides a professional service that includes Web and Desktop widgets, integration into many start pages like Netvibes and PageFlakes, end user customization, integration into the Snipperoo service, market leading analytics and more.
We also have built in viral capability in every widget allowing users to get any MuseStorm widget they bump into for themselves.
Posted by: Ori (MuseStorm) | February 1, 2007 1:47 PM