JS-Kit Reveals The Evolution of the Widget

Today I had an opportunity to talk with the developers at JS-Kit about some of their latest cutting edge widgets. Widgets have become part of Web 2.0 popular culture, but rarely does one come along that we think of as more than just “cute” or at best useful. JS-Kit is developing mega-site widgets for all blogs and websites. The vision at JS-Kit is transform widgets into fully functioning, dynamic and interactive tools for everyone - not just sites with huge budgets. JS-Kit services are truly enterprise class, fully secure and controllable modules for ratings, polls, comments and other interactive services.

Simple - Not!

Khris Loux CEO of JS-Kit demoed some of their widgets and filled me in on what I thought was going to be yet another “cliché” trip around “widget wally world”, but I was pleasantly surprised to be confronted with what we might call “deep” simplicity. These Web 3.0 versions of comment and rating add-ons are very well thought out and solve some major points of pain. No one that I know of has approached widgets in quite this way - let's look at what a Js-Kit simple comment module does:

SEO - JS-Kit has indexed data within the comments widget to be Google (or other) crawler accessible. A simple DNS change at the site enables comment data (keywords etc.) to contribute to page data.

Data Access - Third party data is exported back to the publisher in real time via RSS. A JS-Kit user cannot lose their data even if the service goes out of business because backing up data is now possible. Best of all this data can be reapplied in creative ways for other applications. This “open” structure essentially renders most other IMO web services companies obsolete.

Moderation - Pre and post moderation of comments combined with SPAM protection, session and IP level blocking are a first as far as I know. Pagination, visitor scoring of comments, visitor sorting (via score, Karma, name and date) all combine to provide a truly right visitor/user/reader experience.

As I saw, and you will see, these are not just “run of the mill” poll or ratings widgets. JS-Kit was featured at TechCrunch40, and a good example resides at TC now. According to Khris these great tools are deployed with over 8,000 publishers already and it is easy to see why. Essentially, Khris and his team have taken every widget they design to the next logical and effective level. Khris called his team: “The Robin Hoods of Technology”, because they have taken from the rich sites and dispersed it to the rest of the web. Companies like HBO, Experian, CrunchBase and hundreds of others are currently running these highly customized widgets. Khris expressed something that has always seemed like the natural progression of Web 2.0 technology to me. The widget has thus far been a rather two dimensional tool for adding something to a web site or browser. Even the most complex of these tools is not as refined as those we will see in the near future. If JS-Kit can add dimension to the simplest of site tools and provide “full” function to these - what can we expect from a host of even more refined and complex tools? This will be one of the benchmarks of Web 3.0 in my view.

The Catch

Most blogs, small sites and even many larger sites do not have the resources to create such dynamic Javascript tools - in fact the future of the Web really lies in the collaboration of diverse technologies best suited to task. The catch for JS-Kit is obviously monetization either with ad supported (and shared BTW) versions and highly sophisticated and ad free variants for cost. This strategy is a win-win scenario taken to it's natural end. JS-Kit puts small ads on the free versions and the revenue is shared between JS and the publisher. As viral as these fantastic widget will become - JS will make out like the real Robin Hood and publishers will get true value and revenue 50-50.

Symptoms of Advanced Widgetitis

Most of my readers will be in disbelief, because I have never been impressed with widgets - this just goes to show there is a first time for everything. If you are a blogger or site owner - these dynamic little tools appear rather imperative to me. The reason is that as far as engaging users and competing with larger entities - I do not believe there is a better or more fair set of tools out there. The JS-Kit tools have the capacity to drive traffic, improve readability and navigation and improve overall user experience in simple and unobtrusive ways. The widgets require just a few lines of Javascript to install and they are free.

I suggest you check out the ratings tool here, the Top-Rated tool here and comments tool here. I will be testing these and more great tools with JS-Kits soon and we will update everyone as Khris has some special customizations and applications coming up soon. If you do not have these widgets on your blog now - you could be suffering from advanced widgetitis - or an abundance of playful but virtually useless widgets.

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