The Widget Craze Begins

Did anyone notice that it’s starting to become the year of the widget as Newsweek predicted?

full disclosure: I’m a fulltime employee of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the digital arm of The Washington Post and Newsweek.

Although widgets (or as Google calls them “gadgets”) are not new, we’ve not seen a ton of adoption. We certainly haven’t seen many blogs employing them to encourage others to “take” their content and place them on their blog.

Well all that’s beginning to change

Bloggers Bring Their Widgets

Earlier this week, I noticed two blogs encouraging readers to take their widgets.

Mashable: the blog dedicated to all things social networking interestingly built several widgets using multiple providers including, MuseStorm, SpringWidgets, Widgetbox and Yourminis.

GigaOm went with one provider and chose Widgetbox to run its widget.

So What? Is this the beginning of a widget craze? I doubt it…but I certainly expect to see more companies, more blogs and more writers trying to encourage their readers to distribute their content through widgets. In this case, widgets provide the customization and creativity, making it a cooler way to distribute content than normal RSS feeds.

Tags: Widgets, Newsweek, Gadgets, Google, GigaOm, Mashable, MuseStorm, WidgetBox, YourMinis, SpringWidgets

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to my free RSS feed!

Share This