Widgets & Distribution

by nihaar

We’re very excited about the release of the Featured Blogs program as well as the blog links widget last week. The program marks an effort to spread Youlicit’s core value using a more “server-side” approach. Thus far, most of our efforts have been focused on enabling “client-side” access to Youlicit (via the firefox extension, bookmarklets, and the Google toolbar buttons) which has its own adoption risks:

  • the extension is limited to firefox browsers,
  • majority web users are download phobic,
  • majority web users aren’t aware of what bookmarklets are and how to use them,
  • and users can often forget they have the extensions installed and rarely use your service

In the recent past, widgets have gained an enormous traction as more and more services are becoming widgetized. One of the most successful widgets to date (and also one of the first) has been the Google AdSense widget, giving bloggers an easy and instant wayto monetize their blogs. Using this widget Google was able to distribute its self-serve ad-platform to millions of other sites (besides its own) and reach many more eyeballs. In addition to this there are a few more advantages to using widgets:

  • They are incredibly easy deploy on sites. A simple javascript code snippet is all that is needed.
  • They allow for agile development. Since all the code is stored server-side, making updates and changes to widgets is completely under the developers control. Compare this to a firefox extension for which updates need to be backwards compatible to older versions, require users to update their browsers locally and dependent on Mozilla’s updating policies and reviews.
  • They can be much more personalized for each user in terms of design and content.
  • They offer non-linear returns on pageviews (each addition of a widget provides many more pageviews and potential users than the addition of a firefox toolbar).
  • They can spread more virally.

Widgets, however, are also not without their own adoption risks as stated by Brad Feld. Most widgets tend to have a short half-life and limited utility (which of course is a function of the blogger’s attitude/behavior and the utility of the widget itself). To help alleviate some of these risks, we created the Featured Blogs Alpha program as a means to encourage bloggers to add our widget and create a service that makes a closed circuit loop in terms of pageviews. As a blogger provides us with a pageview, we in turn use the data we gather from that to promote the bloggers content on Youlicit. We’re very excited about growing this program out, so if you are interested please sign up as an alpha blogger. We hope down the road this becomes an additional monetization mechanism for bloggers as the program matures and spreads.

On a side note, as I was writing this entry, I realized that a company that has followed a very similar route is AdaptiveBlue in terms of service distribution strategy. Their first product was a firefox extension (BlueOrganizer) and then later widgetized their services offering the SmartLinks widgets to content producers. It would be very interesting to see the comparative success they’ve had with the widgets and the firefox extension and if they have any further thoughts or lessons learned on this topic of distribution.