Why a Widget Strategy should start with the users

Posted on July 12th, 2007 in: User Experience, Web Theory, Widget Strategy



What’s a widget? Well I have one on my blog, see the right column, that “flickr badge”, that’s a widget. I put it there because it’s useful to me, and useful to my users.

Loren Feldman interviews Jeremy Pepper about his experience at Widgetcon, a conference apparently dedicated to the monetization of, well you know…widgets. It’s interesting that he observes that this NY conference was heavily advertising focus, with little focus on users. Read Jeremy’s post “Widgetcon a focus on the CON”

He’s absolutely right, the widget manufactures are wasting their time by not considering the users first. Did anyone stop to realize that widgets will not be embedded in websites if it doesn’t first serve the user? I’d love to chat with anyone that shares these same ideas, let me know.

I’ve been the Widget market, from Google saying they’re going to pay $100,000 for widget development, as well as understanding Widget strategies.

Loren, that was one of the best interviews yet, and very timely.

  • Jacqueline

    Hi Jeremiah,

    Thanks for this post that’s coming right on time as far as I’m concerned. Because I’m a heavy widget-user(Apple dashboard)but also a marketer too. And it seems to me that a lot of other marketers seem to forget that especially a widget is something a user won’t put on his dashboard/ desktop/blog when it is without relevance to him. To me widgets have been pull-based and now they risk to become push-marketing. Nevertheless, I see the business opportunities where relevance and trust are key (like always in good marketing)

  • http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ jeremiah_owyang

    THanks Jacqueline, A marketer that focuses on users first will succeed!

  • http://www.marketersstudio.com David Berkowitz

    I’m not convinced Jeremy and I attended the same conference, and he only got to a small part of it. There’s a counterpoint here: http://www.marketersstudio.com/2007/07/widgetcon-the-p.html

  • http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ jeremiah_owyang

    THanks Jacqueline, A marketer that focuses on users first will succeed!