A long time ago, I made a little news ticker widget for Digg.com. I made it for myself because I couldn’t find anything else like it. Today, finally, it has been moved to its new home here at WidgetNest. So, be sure to check out the widget that started it all: the Digg Ticker.
‘Facebook fatigue’ kicks in as people tire of social networks | The Register
The above linked article talks about how people are becoming bored with social networks. In general, I agree. The only reason I even have an account on Facebook (the only site I use, even) is so that I can keep up with some of my old acquaintances. Onces we find eachother, however, we can usually take the conversation off the network and in to the real world. Social networks don’t have anything to keep me coming back.
Another part of the article talks about widget developers:
And the “widget economy”, where developers cobble together web
applications in the hope of grabbing their own slice of the riches
social networking’s massive personal data warehouses promised?
Well the business model for RockYou pretty much sums it up. The
startup, that owns the number three Facebook App “Super Wall”, only
sells advertising to other Facebook App developers.
That is why I am glad we do things a little differently at WidgetNest. We aren’t out trying to make tons of money with our applications on Facebook. In fact, last quarter our Widgetbox devshare earnings on Facebook were less than $2. Instead, we are widget developers. We make widgets for other people, and not always for social networks. Basically, we are a web design/development company that specializes in widgets.
Widgets are an intriguing platform, but when a widget is dependent upon some other platform, like MySpace or Facebook, it becomes tied to the success of that platform. That makes the widget vulnerable. A real widget should have its own backbone, its own legs to stand on.
Just updated the WidgetNest home page.
Looks pretty good I think, then again I am biased. Look at all we’ve gotten done and its only February 1st! This really will be the year of the widget, or, at least the year of “WidgetNest gets things done.”
We just added a feature to the timline widget that allows users to stop time! Actually, it just saves the current feed timeline for future reference. This way, if anyone sees something interesting on a particular day - like lots of news about a certain subject - they can save that timeline so that in the future it will remain the same.
Neat huh?
While cleaning out our files the other day, we found this old project - Feed Timeline. Its a utility widget that can show up to four different feeds on a timeline. Neat, huh?
We call it a utility widget because it is not really suited for every day use, however, there are occasions when having a timeline of information is handy. Use this widget for that.
Born from our inability to find anything similar, we present to you Wishlist. Our first Widget/Web App. (Wigapp? Wapget? Anyone?)
Wishlist is a an application with which you can keep a wish list of things you would like, and then show those things on your website with our handy widget. The unique part of this simple project, however, is that it lives entirely on Widgetbox. Besides our description page and a bookmarklet, this application is built for working in the Widgetbox distribution platform. We did this for a couple of reasons, but the most prominent is that we want to test how an application in Widgetbox might perform.
So, without further ado, we officially launch version 1.0 of Wishlist: powered by WidgetNest in to the wild. We realize that it is very simple, but we already have plans for improvements and extra features. So, until then, please enjoy and let us know what you think.
Thanks.
Sprout: The Online WYSIWYG Editor for Flash
This new service call “Sprout” looks awesome. I actually really want to try it, though it does sort of take what we are doing and make it easier… so less people will need our services. But that is good. Now we can focus on the really custom stuff. Right?
Anyway, the widget space just keeps filling! Love it!
My favorite review so far of our RSS Scroller (which, incidentally, just crossed the 10,000 subscription mark on Widgetbox):
“Very cool, I find it? I don’t believe!” - advnery.
Awesome.
Interesting article on TechCrunch about high-traffic widgets/widget providers. Just to compare, we get about 4-5 million views a month, though that is page views and not uniques. Still, for not being a widget platform or distributor, we do pretty well.
There is a lot going on in the widget world, especially ours. We are increasingly busy with projects and client work. I am constantly amazed that something I considered a hobby would turn in to a little self-sustaining business.
WidgetNest is not a widget provider or a distribution service. We let other people tackle that problem. Instead, we create the widgets themselves and it has been incredibly rewarding. In fact, today I was checking out a new podcast over at CNET called The 404. I was amazed to see a little friend of mine - a multimedia player I helped make a while back for Castfire, “an enterprise class platform for podcasting and videocasting.” I spent a lot of time on that player, and it is fun to see it around the internet.
I would like to congratulate MixerCast for their new series of funding. I do not know anyone on the team over there, but I do like their work. Anyway, as I said, there is a lot going on in the widget world.
Keep your eyes open, we have a lot going on.