Karen Jenkin’s Blog

Widgets – little self-contained applications that can be placed on a web page – are proliferating with the rise in online blogging, portals and social networking sites that have opened up their platforms (e.g. Facebook). Widgets effectively operate in a symbiotic relationship with the site or platform they sit on, each helping the other drive up interest and user traffic (and thus advertising potential).

Social networking sites like LinkedIn and MySpace are licking their lips in anticipation of what can be achieved by effectively throwing open web application platforms to external developers. The same goes for venture capitalists and others who want to get in on the action: Google has a program called Gadget Ventures that provides grants or seed money to widget developers, whilst venture capital firm Bay Partners (US) has setup a multi-million dollar program called AppFactory to invest in startups purely targeting Facebook. Those social networking sites yet to open their platform will be feeling the pressure to follow suit.

Beyond the open-source community, this is part of the first major wave of businesses allowing external, adhoc development contributions to their products. The widgets trend will let businesses work out how they will manage and take advantage of outside development, as well as the concept of virtual “resources”, and to prepare for more collaboration in the future; all with a relatively low level of risk. Only time will tell how these collaborative relationships will morph and mature in the coming years. However, businesses cannot afford to ignore this trend.