2007 - The Year of the Widget?

Review: Widgetbox - depository and interface for those producing web widgets and for those who are wishing to easily place web widgets on their blog or website.

The first time I heard about a “widget” was back in university when studying econimics. The supply and demand of a generic company producing a generic product called “widgets”. In the past couple of years, this “generic product” has moved to the computer realm with Apple leading the way with the ability to produce small “generic” applications called Dashboard Widgets on the desktop. Yahoo followed with its own set of mini-apps called Yahoo Widgets as did Google with Google Gadgets. In the blogosphere, Wordpress and other services gave the name to apps and other pieces of information which sit in the small column beside the main list of blog entries. Soon everyone was calling that sidebar the “widget bar”, a name still growing today.

So… thus was the birth of web widget and a brand new Web 2.0 service.

Widgetbox mesmerized me for a few days for numerous reasons. The first was the sheer simplicity of getting widgets on to your blog or website. Once you have established an account, one little snippet of code will take care of ALL your widgets now and in the future. Period. Take some off, put some on, move them around - it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to go digging into the html of your website and screw around until you’ve completely destroyed the look and feel you so meticulously worked on to get. Everything instead is safely stored in little pieces on widgetbox.com’s server.

The second reason for being mesmerized is the depository of widgets available. There’s enough Web 2.0 services and startups there to keep the authors of Profy (or Techcrunch, or Lifehacker) busy for sometime! Web widgets seem to be created and nurtured specifically for Web 2.0 apps!

And finally, even if you’ve spent endless evenings testing and trying out each of the new widgets available, you’ll discover you not only can make one panel of widgets for one of your sites, but you can make a whole army of panels for every site you have and/or each of your clients as well. All for free!

Widgetbox isn’t the only game in town which “spreads the love” of web widgets. Also check out Widgetoko, Snipperoo and Widgify.

Finally, take a look at Hooman Radfar’s article about 2007 being the year of the widget. Let me tell ya, I’m now drinking the cool-aid and am a believer!