A day in the life of a widget
Posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 11:30am. #
Last Thursday, I went to a moderately unsatisfactory conference on widgets. I say it was moderately unsatisfactory, because during the event we saw precisely no widgets at all, but mostly sales pitches from improbably-named companies, one of which used the fantastic bullshit bingo claim that widgets help “leverage virality”, which was so splendid bollocks-language that I made a special note of it.
We also had no examples of how widgets had done, who had used widgets, and how their takeup has been. The audience were more interested in “where’s the money coming from?”, and the whole event appeared to be moderately negative towards widgets and gadgets - probably because the audience didn’t really understand what it was that they were talking about.
I piped up from the back, essentially saying that the big thing that nobody had stressed was the need for an API, and to make that API public. Without a public API, your audience can’t make widgets with your content. Everything you build should have an API. (Thankfully, I practice what I preach, at least in this case).
The BBC runs something called BBC Backstage which contains a (woefully inadequate) list of APIs and feeds that the BBC runs. Some aren’t very reliable, which is something that I wish to change. Some obvious feeds aren’t there yet, which - for radio, at least - I wish to change, too.
One of those feeds for BBC Weather, for which I spent a rainy afternoon coding an iGoogle BBC weather gadget. I placed that blog entry live, announced it on the Backstage mailing list, submitted it to the iGoogle directory, and forgot about it.
The screenshot above, therefore, shows what happens to a widget once released into the wild. As you can see, its takeup is really rather good: it’s regularly getting 8,500 hits every day. And I’ve simply not promoted it. (Nor’s anyone else, from what I can tell). And let’s be very clear: this is a widget which is designed to replace a weather widget which is installed on every single new iGoogle page: hardly the easiest job to convince people to change.
What I’ve not monitored (but could) is how many people use it to click through to the BBC website, to satiate those who wanted ROI information. (It’s not really the purpose of this gadget, being honest.)
So hopefully this information helps those who were at that event, but couldn’t see the benefit of widgets. Build an API - make it open - and watch your community do stuff with your content.
If you’re looking for good widgets to add to your iGoogle front page, by the way, try Media UK’s media news, and Media UK’s live radio and television player. I’ve used them every day since I, er, wrote them.
The screenshot is straight from my Asus Eee PC, which I’ve customised to add a sensible desktop to, instead of the tabbed interface. It’s a five minute job.
Disclosure: I was a guest at the Mashup widget event, and avoided paying the entrance fee. My full disclosure is relevant to this posting.
Paul said at March 4th, 2008 at 3:06am 
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