Lots of discussion, everywhere, about Widgets. The common question is business model. I had interesting conversations on the topic yesterday with Chris Fralic (First Round Capital), Dick Costolo (Feedburner) and the folks over at NBBC.
I’ve also had a good parry with Brad Feld on the topic over on his terrific blog. (Thanks Ivan, I’ve fixed the link).
So, I am going to try to start a debate here with the best thinkers on the topic: Can the “widget management systems” companies build a real (ie, valuable enough for “venture returns”) business? Ed A, Hooman, Brad F, Mark J, Dick C, Chris F, Fred W, please have at it!
March 14, 2007 at 12:34 pm |
Mike,
The short answer is, of course, that there are numerous ways that widget management companies can build real businesses around the services they provide. Whether revenues come through monetization of the distribution network, charging for usage of syndication infrastructure, or some of the other significant ways that the various widget startups are exploring, it’s not too hard to come up with models that are going to far exceed what many of the more popular web 2.0 companies can claim to aspire to.
But, here’s something specific to think about. Every day, over a thousand new users let me share the space on their web pages at no cost to me. Shame on us if we can’t find a way to leverage that.
Ed
March 14, 2007 at 4:29 pm |
Mike you link to Brad’s blog leads to a WordPress login page??!
March 18, 2007 at 6:20 am |
Mike,
That is an interesting topic to start with for instance.I definitely will try the best to answer to this in way of my experience running urbanread.com which runs to provide news to the blogs with profits.I think what is interesting is the simple fact of analyzing what is the most important to you.The monetization is definetely needed but that looks the old way of doing business.Lets take for instance the mybloglog widget which you have on the right.The mybloglog community did a fantastic work of not monetzing and spoiling the user experience instead went the concept of offering extra service to its users with an feasible amount.When I am writing I definitely see Eric is one if those who visited this blog.You can contact me for more.Cheers…
March 19, 2007 at 12:47 am |
Getting here quite late – I posted a bit about this at the Lightspeed blog in January at http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/01/07/whither-widgets/
1. Ads opted into by the widgets creator
2. Freemium models
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