As Richard MacManus opined, Widgets are the New Black. Widgets are particularly popular within social networks and on blog sidebars, extending the reach of news, websites, and product of services. But as Paul Kedrosky notes, “I like the idea of syndicating functionality via widgets, but without being tied directly to either ads or merchant programs it’s not clear to me how you get paid for doing it.”
That’s an interesting point because as I browsed through Widgetbox, a new widget management service currently in private beta, I saw a specific category called Money Makers, which contained widgets that potentially could earn bloggers, MySpacers, and others money.
The Widgetbox strategy is pretty smart. Essentially,they provide both a platform for developers to create widgets and a directory for widget fans to find them. But one of the potential problems with Widgetbox is that many of today’s cooler web services are developing custom widgets as part of their viral marketing strategies. Or in some instances widgets are their entire strategy, as in the case with Favorite Thingz (check out Mashable’s review).
