Wikipedia - A widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML -based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation
Righto. umm.. err - so what was that again? Basically you know the ‘BBC’ or ‘joke of the day’ box you see on igoogle - that’s an example of a widget. So what’s so cool about that again? Technical details aside - here’s what’s so revolutionary about widgets.
Media Variety - A widget can take just about any media type… text, pics, video, audio, flash based games. Which reminds me of one of my favourite widgets - super mario (Yes! you can actually play right here!)
800K installs of this widget and growing
Omnipresence - It can go anywhere and everywhere. You don’t have to code again… and it’s got the poetic beauty of of drag and drop. Imagine you have this brand new video you want to show the world. You put it up on your website and you wait for people to come and see it. AAh…. what if people could take a copy of the video with them and deposit it all over the internet… on facebook, on their blog, on rediff, on in.com … etc - check out this radio player
Now - you’ve never heard of this station before… but at one glance I’ve already found 150K people who have installed music widgets like this.
Monetisation Don’t wait for those eyeballs on your site. Embed that advertisement in your widget. Whatever the topic, whereever you are, let the long tail take your widget for a ride. Instead pumping in PPC dollars to pull visitors… your widget will get the impressions and clicks.
Here’s a widget for my blog. Click on ‘Get Widget’ and take it everywhere with you.. You can probably see the ad in between
Measurement Analytics aren’t too far behind… data on number of installs, views, demographics/ geographies… you’ll know whether your campaign is hitting home or not.
So - if you’ve read down till here then congratulations. You’ve completed Widget 101. Now the sales pitch
Gaboli helps Indian content publishers, advertisers and enterprises get more bang for their buck by widget creation, distribution, monetisation and measurement. If any of the above interests you - we’d be glad to help you widgetise your assets.
(PS - the blog took 2 days cause i kept playing the mario game in between.
PPS - i just made up the phrase ‘widgetise your assets’.. sounds quite cool doesn’t it?)
