Riding the Storm
Snipperoo Blog MuseStorm Widget
Ivan, our good friend from Snipperoo, is using the MuseStorm Widget Syndication Platform to allow his blog readers to pull his blog's content into their websites and blogs. If you care about widgets, you should definitely check out Ivan's blog and his company, Snipperoo.Widget Misconceptions
Jeremy Zawodny wrote a post titled “JavaScript Badges and Widgets Considered Harmful“.
The post lists six issues that Jeremy finds ‘harmful’ about widgets.
I totally disagree with Jeremy’s point of view and here’s why, point by point:
1. Jeremy calls widgets “a hack”. I don’t see why embedding a widget is a hack more than embedding an image using the tag.
2. Jeremy complains that search engines can’t mine widget data on a page. I think it’s not relevant. Widgets are embedded to make the page/blog/site more useful for users, not machines. I understand the value of indexing and there are definitely ways to make widgets more crawl-able, but heck, humans first.
3. Site performance issues. Like anything else, if you embed a lousy widget, you might suffer a performance hit. At MuseStorm we thoroughly test our widgets to ensure good performance.
4. Hard to skin? did Jeremy take a look at the MuseStorm Widget Configurator?
5. Jeremy claims that widgets are not secure. This is a valid point if you’re dealing with JavaScript based widgets from unknown sources. But Flash widgets are much more secure, and live within their own sandbox, so no worries there.
6. “Don’t work everywhere”? hardly. Most decent widgets work everywhere, especially the Flash ones.
What do you think?
Widgets are viral. Case in point: RateItAll
A few days ago, Lawrence from RateItAll posted a MuseStorm widget that listed the 2007 Super Bowl commercials reviews from RateItAll.People really liked the widget and content, it seems, as it has popped up all over the Web (for example, here and here).
So what made this widget work so well?
- Great, compelling content
- Attractive widget
- Ability to "copy" widget easily to another website
- Ability to personalize the widget to fit the hosting website
RSS Marketing Search Engine
If you’re in the RSS business check out the work done by Marjolein of CleverClogs on the Power 150 - an RSS-Enabled Marketing Search Engine.
Marjolein, btw, uses the MuseStorm service as you can see at the top her CleverClogs blog. As an expert on RSS she also provided us with amazing feedback and we’re glad she is doing so well!