Monday, September 25, 2006

Widgetbox Launches

UPDATE: Click here to watch their very successful pitch at DEMO.


Widgetbox, on on-line directory of web widgets for blogs and other webpages, launches this week at Demo.

As an open web widget marketplace, Widgetbox serves the needs of both web widget developers and web personal publishers, including bloggers, web site and profile developers, participants in web auctions and others.

Widget developers using Widgetbox include the very small, independent developers and the very large such as Yahoo!, AOL, and eBay. At launch, Widgetbox is proud to announce partnerships with 38 of the web's leading companies, including Typepad, Meebo, and AOL Pictures. At launch, the directory includes over 290 widgets, a number that grows by the day due to a very popular developers' program.

Central to the power and simplicity of Widgetbox is the Widget Syndication Platform. This technology enables:

  • Live Widgets: Widgets are always live within blogs and web pages; they can be re-configured instantly and without touching HTML code.
  • Smart Blogs: Widgets can be “tag aware”, meaning a web publisher can make widgets react to the content of their web site. For example, an image widget might display images related to the content of the most recent blog post.
  • Widget Panels: Drag and drop placement makes it easy to install and manage widgets within Widgetbox. See the Technorati widget on my blog as an example.

I believe that web widgets represent the lowest common denominator for the adoption and usage of web services. Widgets leverage the millions of dollars invested in web services, the power of syndication - ie the consumption of functionality "off domain," and the ease of use of Flickr.

Like AdSense, it is critical that web companies allow users to consume web services at locations of the consumers' choosing. Widgetbox is a powerful innovation in making that consumption easy and powerful - a rare combination.

For those of you who blog or maintain a web page, I encourage you to sign up and begin to enrich your users’ experience with relevant widgets that add to the mission of your site.

No comments:

Post a Comment