So many people are using the term widgets, though so many times for a different format or in a different context. What is a widget? Where and how do you use widgets? How many different widget-like apps exist? In what context? Serving what purpose and on what platform/device? So many questions about one single thing.
The widgetized web has arrived and its more than apps on Facebook.
Earlier this week I read the following: “Widgets are dead”.
Widgets are dead
“One goal of the Facebook redesign was to kill pointless widgets that cluttered user-profiles. It’s working. When Facebook launched its platform last year, AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neil created your typical one-trick app: the Bush Countdown Clock. All it did was sit on a user’s profile like a badge, and yet it attracted and maintained over 50,000 users. But with Facebook’s redesign, O’Neill’s widget and other simple badges like it were moved to a “boxes” tab on user profiles. After the redesign went permanent on September 11, traffic to the countdown clock dropped 60 percent almost overnight. Writes O’Neill: “Widgets have not survived the shift over and my guess is that within a matter of weeks we will see most top-performing widget applications practically disappear.” In December 2007, VC Ross Levinsohn said 2008 would be all about “Facebook plus widgets.” Maybe that sort of poor prediction explains why he and partner Jon Miller can’t find their pot of gold?”
Honestly, here we are just talking about applications on Facebook. Saying widgets are dead, only because Facebook is throwing up some barriers that is too much exaggerated. True it affects scaleability, true it creates problems if an app is only running on Facebook. In the end widgets are not dead. Instead, we’re just at the beginning.
Its better to say that within the widget ecosystem there are some niches with more difficuties, though other niches still and will flourish.
