The New York Times has an article about the emergence of widgets. It certainly isn't the first article about widgets but it provides a good introduction and a great title -- "Some Bling for Your Blog" -- which is really what widgets provide for blogs. Some bloggers, like Pastor Hyatt, may already have a widget addiction. On his Web log, Pastor Hyatt, the leader of the Evergreen Community in Portland, Ore., has woven in widgets, or mini-applications, that show a selection of book covers from his personal library, present the most recent posts from some of his favorite blogs, and serve up random quotes from the television show "Arrested Development."
Some of the widgets mentioned in the Times article include Blufr, StreamPad, ChipIn, MyBlogLog, LibraryThing, Mini-Clock, Plazes.com and ClustrMaps. Widgets have been around for quite a while. It is just a catchier name for what used to be called blog add-ons. Before that the snippets of code that you could paste on your homepage was often simply called "free stuff" for your website. There has already been discussion earlier this year that 2007 could be the year of the widget. There was even a conference about the widget economy last November called WidgetsLive -- it was produced by Niall Kennedy and Om Malik.
"You start small, and it's kind of like an addiction," said Pastor Hyatt (his blog is at bobhyatt.typepad.com). "TypePad has a whole section of widgets, and they're adding more all the time," he continued, referring to a popular blog-hosting service.
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, about 12 million Americans now maintain a blog. Widgets are elements, often in the left or right columns of a blog, that enhance its usefulness or aesthetic appeal. (The term "widgets," confusingly, can also refer to compact applications that operate on a computer's desktop.)
"Widgets pull content or services from some other place on the Web, and put it into your personal page," said Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures in Manhattan.
Widgets have been growing over the past two or three years. They have followed the growth of blogging and social networking. Widget companies need people with profiles and blogs to embed their snippets of code in order to thrive. Widgets make it easy for bloggers and social network users to add photos, videos, music selections, weather forecasts, clocks, quizzes, maps, friends, polls, chat, emoticons, stock charts, sports scores, video games and other content to your blog. There are also widgets for your desktop but it is the blog widgets that seem to be generating the recent excitement. Yahoo has Yahoo Widgets; Google offers Google Gadgets and Microsoft has Microsoft Gadgets. Wordpress offers sidebar widgets for bloggers using its blog publishing service. Typepad also has a widget gallery.
There are already a few blogs dedicated to widgets like Widgetoko, Widgets Lab, Widgets Blog, Sexy Widget, LogDirect, Wordpress Widgets, Snipperoo, Flying Seeds, StickiWidgets, eHub, Mashable and Widgify. A couple other widget blogs -- Widget Daily and Widget World -- have not updated recently.
WidgetBox.com and Snipperoo Widget Directory are websites that can help you find widgets. You can see our shorter list of blog add-ons (widgets) here. Hot Scripts provides a list of remotely hosted web scripts. HowToWeb.com's Widget Search also helps people find widgets.
Widget Buzzkill: Before you get too excited about widgets Valleywag has listed five reasons why the "level of enthusiasm for these modest add-ons -- services such as Blinkyou and Coolmyspacecomments which can provide photo galleries or other baubles to otherwise basic web pages -- is entirely out of proportion to their importance."
Widget Madness
