As the Internet's newest way to connect brands with consumers, widgets have
officially arrived. These portable applets appear on blogs, websites, and
social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Offered by third-party
developers as embedded Flash (.swf) objects, the self-contained badges allow
page owners to personalize their sites with photo slide shows, music
playlists, games, and other content. Widgets also allow companies to engage
their audience with compelling content while also branding a company and/or
product. Recent news of photo-sharing widget pioneer Slide's $500 million
valuation gives us more than a clue to the huge potential of these little
attention grabbers.
Because widgets are easy to install, the barrier to adoption by page owners
is low. At the... (more)