Microsoft’s Popfly

Microsoft’s popfly is an easy way to create widgets and mashups using Silverlight. With Popfly Game Creator, it is adding a simple Web-based authoring environment for creating casual arcade-style games.

The tool is built for non-programmers so that anyone can create a game, and is particularly aimed at kids and teenagers. It is entirely browser-based. You create a game using predefined templates that can be modified, and when you are satisfied, you hit play to run the code. The games run in Silverlight and will be hosted at Popfly, but are embeddable anywhere on the Web.

Buzzword for 2009: “Bootstrapping”

The financial crisis will have its impact on early stage companies. Companies with fragile and unproven business models (online advertising), high capital expenditures, relatively young markets (mobile apps) will find it difficult to secure financing from business angels and vc’s. Actually, I think that vc’s will not invest in new companies, they will keep their cash at hand, focus on their existing portfolio companies and support that instead of looking for new companies.

The earlier you are in your development phase, the better. Once your business needs to prove its commercial skills or needs to find an exit, you’re in trouble.

SEED stage: Those companies which still need to close their seed round will have difficulties as they still need to prove their product/service and business. If they have an interesting technology that needs tuning and further development, it might be easier. Eventually, a critical element for investors will be the “entrepreneur” and the “team”. There must be a proven management team behind if it where to convince investors from making a first bet on it. The advantage is that most of these companies are not commercially viable, i.e. they still need to work hard on product development. The current economic recession, is just the right moment to focus on development.

Series A: If you’ve already closed a round, then you’re kind of safe. You might have a fragile business model (online advertising), or are active in a young market (mobile apps), you’ll probably get the support from your investors. As your investors won’t take, or will be careful in taking on more investments. They’ll probably focus on your company and see how you can manage getting through this rough period. Bootstrapping will of course be elementary.

Series B, C, D: There is no market for exits, because an exit is going IPO (who wants to do that now?) or via a trade sale that requires transactions with leverage from banks and or exchanges of shares which are worth less every day. Thus later stage companies will have to focus on “bootstrapping”, no more hiring, no free services and trying to get through the recession period.

Widget Trends for 2009

 I. Widgets have infiltrated the social media landscape and are now fixtures on millions of user’s profile pages on dozens of social networks. Users themselves recognize the utility and fun of widgets, pass them on to friends, and actively endorse them by installing them on their profile pages as a way to express themselves to the world.

II. Widgets are driving the decentralization and democratization of the web. Particularly as they relate to emerging open standards for data portability, “ownership” of user generated content and publisher and advertiser “control” over distributed services.

III. Looking for the best business model. Eye-popping valuations for widget companies have given new urgency to a debate that’s been around as long as web widgets have: Other than being acquired, how does one build a successful business on widgets?

IV. Entertainment brands and media companies realize the importance of social media and are now moving beyond the passive ad experience, and instead are actively looking for compelling ways to engage their online entertainment consumers. Widget publishing platforms offer new solutions to help entertainment brands design and create ‘customized’ widgets. The result – powerful social media marketing campaigns.

V. It’s a widget world and widgets are going mobile! Ushering in a new era of mobile user interface (UI) is advanced research. Mobile social networking is a quickly evolving industry. What will be the strategies and technologies necessary for mobilizing social networks and monetizing user-generated content?

VI. The world is permeated with net-connected screens that are always on and can’t include keyboards, mice or browsers, such as digital photo frames, LCD TVs, clock radios and LCD panels on appliances. How can widgets serve a market for mostly-passive, screen-based devices.

effort to centralize the growing overload of information

I hope this blog helps me to get info about widget ecosystem a bit more structured and organized … we’ll see what happens…