How Widgets Capture Consumers
on iMedia Connection
by Andy Jedynak, May 24, 2006
WeatherBug's general manager discusses the world of widgets and what it means to interactive marketing.
If you're a media brand, it's nice to have a big audience. Nice to have lots of "eyeballs" to sell. Nice to have a great story to tell, and the kind of strong reach that can really help the advertiser. With the massive shift of eyeballs to internet, it's been tough for the traditional media folks to keep their story intact, but those of us on the digital side are now largely pacing well when it comes to the eyeballs we have and can sell profitably. Just when business is looking good, I'm here to tell you how those eyeballs you and your advertisers count on could soon get elusive.
Welcome to the World of Widgets
In my last column I wrote how a mobile phone destroyed my NCAA March Madness experience. And I took that opportunity to expound on why mobile will someday soon change the face of internet and how every one of us digital folk will need to get mobile to maintain our hegemony in the interactive world. But another relatively new development, called the "widget," (also called a "gadget" by some) sits - perhaps as an important bridge - between where we are now and the future when mobile consumption of interactive content reigns supreme.
What, where and why are widgets?
Widgets are elegant little interactive modules designed to help people perform simple, personally-relevant and highly useful functions. They appear as big multi-shaped computer desktop icons that you interact with using your mouse and keyboard. Weather, time, calendars, news-feeds, games, cam-viewers, sports reports, to-do lists, radio players, VOIP utilities, tax calculators, sticky notes, email checkers-- the list goes on and on. Think of the most useful things you do online, then try to imagine them being about 10 times more convenient than you're used to. That's a widget.
Why are they so convenient? Because the artisans of internet's cutting edge have taken everything they've learned over the past dozen years and started from scratch. They have carefully designed and thoughtfully prepared a new tightly-policed environment where various helpful tools sit on an instantly-accessible alternate layer within your computer's interface.
More simply, everyone knows what their computer's desktop looks like: little icons on a background, ready for you to double click them so that you can load up a software program that at some point in the past you spent time learning to use. Widgets on the other hand reside, ready to intuitively use, on an instantly-accessible parallel desktop universe. This alternate desktop is always accessible to you at the stroke of a finger. If your computer is equipped with widget technology, press a single key (for example "F8") and your "widget layer" appears instantly, revealing your choice of widgets already up and running and waiting for your command.
This new universe is additive to the experience you're already used to. Working on a spreadsheet? One keystroke and you're instantly catapulted to this new and elegant desktop filled with delightfully simple, easy to operate, pre-selected utilities for life. Another keystroke, and "poof" you're back to your spreadsheet.
Once you experience this new world of convenience, speed and simplicity on your computer you'll never ever want to go without it. Once you have widgets, life without them -- without that key stroke -- ill make computing feel empty, and your computer seem only half-there.
Where to try them:
Apple users should check them out here. Newer Apple computers come pre-equipped.
Microsoft is in the game too of course. But PC user's might try out Yahoo's answer to Apple.
Click a link above, and you'll be glad you did because they're really cool. Moreover, it's a whole new world that will massively affect us digital folk.
How widgets will affect us digital folk:
In short, widgets are where eyeballs will go. And once they go there, they will go there every day instead of to the web. Yes, after a dozen short years, we're already talking about erosion in web-usership in favor of something else.
To illustrate, please forgive me for using an example which is personal. I don't talk much about WeatherBug (where I work) in my columns, but I will today because I know WeatherBug well, and it best makes the point.
Surprisingly few people know how many eyeballs we at WeatherBug actually have. Over the last couple of years, between our website and our desktop application, WeatherBug has consistently been one of the top ten properties on internet every day. As much as it's nice to be among the top 10, we also know we don't get measured by either of the two mainline ratings services in other areas, where of late, our growth has been by far the greatest. One example is on mobile devices, where our usership is in the millions.
The other is our widget. In fact to our delight, according to Apple.com as of this writing, WeatherBug now has the #1 most popular Apple widget. How popular? Many hundreds of thousands of people download our Apple widget every month. We're delighted by its natural growth. We didn't market it. We don't sell advertising on it. We make no money from it-- at least not yet. But if it were counted by the ratings services, it would significantly grow our unique usership.
With our widget, people like our live streaming highly-local weather content, and the simplicity of accessing it through a custom software interface, but our mainstream desktop app also has these features. What I believe has also helped our widget usership take off is the environment it sits in-- that instantly-accessible alternate desktop layer that people can easily customize with the content and tools most important to them. In my case, a quick keystroke and up pops the weather, my email, my calendar, a cool clock, and a news feed.
And great content in a paradigm-shifting interface is a trend we all need to be ready for.
Recently I was at the massive, timeless National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas. For decades at this conference, they've been talking about how to "lead the way in convergence." But while many broadcasters, alas, are still way behind the curve, they finally got it right this year-- at least in their thinking. Seems they as a whole suddenly realized they are no longer trying to be "leaders in convergence," but instead realized that consumers have already converged and broadcasters who want to succeed need to follow smartly. With widgets it may not just be the traditional media folks who are behind the curve. It could be us too if we don't keep our ear to the rail. Especially because widget usage remains substantially unmeasured by the ratings services we typically rely on.
So, you've really gotta try these widgets. They're going to be huge. When I say try them, I'm talking to media brands, advertisers and ratings services. The simple reason is that consumers may already be there in much greater numbers than we think, and once you try widgets I bet that'll be your gut as well. That means that, like traditional media folk, our job now is (apparently) simply to keep up with the masses.
And by the way, just for the record, most widgets are already about the right size to fit on mobile devices.
Ponder that for a while, then follow the eyeballs.
by Andy Jedynak, May 24, 2006
WeatherBug's general manager discusses the world of widgets and what it means to interactive marketing.If you're a media brand, it's nice to have a big audience. Nice to have lots of "eyeballs" to sell. Nice to have a great story to tell, and the kind of strong reach that can really help the advertiser. With the massive shift of eyeballs to internet, it's been tough for the traditional media folks to keep their story intact, but those of us on the digital side are now largely pacing well when it comes to the eyeballs we have and can sell profitably. Just when business is looking good, I'm here to tell you how those eyeballs you and your advertisers count on could soon get elusive.
Welcome to the World of Widgets
In my last column I wrote how a mobile phone destroyed my NCAA March Madness experience. And I took that opportunity to expound on why mobile will someday soon change the face of internet and how every one of us digital folk will need to get mobile to maintain our hegemony in the interactive world. But another relatively new development, called the "widget," (also called a "gadget" by some) sits - perhaps as an important bridge - between where we are now and the future when mobile consumption of interactive content reigns supreme.
What, where and why are widgets?
Widgets are elegant little interactive modules designed to help people perform simple, personally-relevant and highly useful functions. They appear as big multi-shaped computer desktop icons that you interact with using your mouse and keyboard. Weather, time, calendars, news-feeds, games, cam-viewers, sports reports, to-do lists, radio players, VOIP utilities, tax calculators, sticky notes, email checkers-- the list goes on and on. Think of the most useful things you do online, then try to imagine them being about 10 times more convenient than you're used to. That's a widget.
Why are they so convenient? Because the artisans of internet's cutting edge have taken everything they've learned over the past dozen years and started from scratch. They have carefully designed and thoughtfully prepared a new tightly-policed environment where various helpful tools sit on an instantly-accessible alternate layer within your computer's interface.
More simply, everyone knows what their computer's desktop looks like: little icons on a background, ready for you to double click them so that you can load up a software program that at some point in the past you spent time learning to use. Widgets on the other hand reside, ready to intuitively use, on an instantly-accessible parallel desktop universe. This alternate desktop is always accessible to you at the stroke of a finger. If your computer is equipped with widget technology, press a single key (for example "F8") and your "widget layer" appears instantly, revealing your choice of widgets already up and running and waiting for your command.
This new universe is additive to the experience you're already used to. Working on a spreadsheet? One keystroke and you're instantly catapulted to this new and elegant desktop filled with delightfully simple, easy to operate, pre-selected utilities for life. Another keystroke, and "poof" you're back to your spreadsheet.
Once you experience this new world of convenience, speed and simplicity on your computer you'll never ever want to go without it. Once you have widgets, life without them -- without that key stroke -- ill make computing feel empty, and your computer seem only half-there.
Where to try them:
Apple users should check them out here. Newer Apple computers come pre-equipped.
Microsoft is in the game too of course. But PC user's might try out Yahoo's answer to Apple.
Click a link above, and you'll be glad you did because they're really cool. Moreover, it's a whole new world that will massively affect us digital folk.
How widgets will affect us digital folk:
In short, widgets are where eyeballs will go. And once they go there, they will go there every day instead of to the web. Yes, after a dozen short years, we're already talking about erosion in web-usership in favor of something else.
To illustrate, please forgive me for using an example which is personal. I don't talk much about WeatherBug (where I work) in my columns, but I will today because I know WeatherBug well, and it best makes the point.
Surprisingly few people know how many eyeballs we at WeatherBug actually have. Over the last couple of years, between our website and our desktop application, WeatherBug has consistently been one of the top ten properties on internet every day. As much as it's nice to be among the top 10, we also know we don't get measured by either of the two mainline ratings services in other areas, where of late, our growth has been by far the greatest. One example is on mobile devices, where our usership is in the millions.
The other is our widget. In fact to our delight, according to Apple.com as of this writing, WeatherBug now has the #1 most popular Apple widget. How popular? Many hundreds of thousands of people download our Apple widget every month. We're delighted by its natural growth. We didn't market it. We don't sell advertising on it. We make no money from it-- at least not yet. But if it were counted by the ratings services, it would significantly grow our unique usership.
With our widget, people like our live streaming highly-local weather content, and the simplicity of accessing it through a custom software interface, but our mainstream desktop app also has these features. What I believe has also helped our widget usership take off is the environment it sits in-- that instantly-accessible alternate desktop layer that people can easily customize with the content and tools most important to them. In my case, a quick keystroke and up pops the weather, my email, my calendar, a cool clock, and a news feed.
And great content in a paradigm-shifting interface is a trend we all need to be ready for.
Recently I was at the massive, timeless National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas. For decades at this conference, they've been talking about how to "lead the way in convergence." But while many broadcasters, alas, are still way behind the curve, they finally got it right this year-- at least in their thinking. Seems they as a whole suddenly realized they are no longer trying to be "leaders in convergence," but instead realized that consumers have already converged and broadcasters who want to succeed need to follow smartly. With widgets it may not just be the traditional media folks who are behind the curve. It could be us too if we don't keep our ear to the rail. Especially because widget usage remains substantially unmeasured by the ratings services we typically rely on.
So, you've really gotta try these widgets. They're going to be huge. When I say try them, I'm talking to media brands, advertisers and ratings services. The simple reason is that consumers may already be there in much greater numbers than we think, and once you try widgets I bet that'll be your gut as well. That means that, like traditional media folk, our job now is (apparently) simply to keep up with the masses.
And by the way, just for the record, most widgets are already about the right size to fit on mobile devices.
Ponder that for a while, then follow the eyeballs.
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