(cross-posted from my Globe and Mail blog)
Outside of the geek-o-sphere, the term widget is often used interchangeably with words like gizmo or gadget or doodad (or the somewhat less popular doohickey) or thingamajig. All of these terms are used to describe a device or thing that either doesn’t have a name — or at least not one that is easily remembered — or whose existence may actually be in question, as in “why don’t they invent a widget that…” etc.
As more and more people set up their “digital me” sites, whether they are blogs or MySpace pages or Facebook sites, widgets are becoming the machinery that allows media and content of all kinds to be easily distributed (see my column in Thursday’s Globe and Mail about Facebook’s F8 platform). Bands allow their music to be embedded — or widgetized — in webpages, and broadcast networks such as CBS are experimenting with allowing their video to be turned into widgets. Companies like Brightcove are trying to turn widgets into micro-economies, with ads and interactive features that try to turn widget browsers into buyers.
In an attempt to quantify the “widgetization” of the Web, traffic measurement firm comScore has launched a widget-tracking service. According to its analysis, photo-related widgets are at the top of the heap traffic-wise, with Slide being number one with more than 117 million unique users in April, or almost 14 per cent of the available Internet audience. RockYou, which recently launched a Facebook widget, came second with 82 million (the survey measured only widgets based on Flash and didn’t track desktop widgets).
Update:
Om Malik at GigaOm has a good post on the topic of widgets, and says comScore’s attempt to measure widgets has a number of flaws (comScore’s methodology being one of them) and the whole thing strikes him as a bit of a jellybean contest.