What cyber giant will someday be bigger and more powerful than both MySpace and Facebook combined? With a potential for a broader multitude of users, widgets, also known as Applications, are truly the wave of the future. Within the next 10 years, nearly every frequent cyber user will employ a plethora of web widgets to personalize his or her “cyber societies” as well as a desktop widget toolkit to manage his or her real, non-cyber life. These widgets are on the rise to be more powerful than the social networks themselves because they can be used universally across all social networks. Facebook already has an extensive library of applications, from the boredom of weather updates to the excitement of operating virtual bar, and MySpace is now following suit. Goodbye to the insular days of limiting networks and hello to the days of widespread applications.

You have a Facebook and/or MySpace account, you use Flickr.com or Photobucket to upload pics, you post videos on YouTube, and you blog on LiveJournal. By now, your head is spinning and you start to wonder how you have time for anything outside of cyberspace. Remember the real world?! Thankfully, widgets are here to save the day!


What are widgets?
Most simply, a web widget is a third party programming code chunk embedded in a webpage in an image file. It adds content to the webpage that is not static. Sometimes referred to as a “gadget,” a widget can be any icon or graphical interface that is manipulated by the Internet user to perform a desired action. A great example would be anytime you see a YouTube video on a page that isn’t YouTube.com.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, widgets were as simple as buttons, drop-down menus, anything the user could interact with. Then, widgets expanded to be link counters and advertising banners — those sometimes annoying, sometimes interesting dynamic, moving boxes embedded by someone other than the specific website you’re looking at. As always, the goal is to increase simplicity while increasing functionality.

Today, desktop widgets have evolved as small applications that run constantly on your desktop. The aim is to replace the need to repetitively visit a website for common information — like the weather or the stock ticker. However, these widgets often require you download a widget “holder,” like Yahoo! Widget or Mac OSX. While web widgets can appear on any webpage, anywhere in the world, desktop widgets are more stable and cling to your actual computer’s desktop.


“RSS” or Rich Site Summary, colloquially dubbed Really Simple Syndication, is a family of web feed formats that publish frequently updated web content in a standardized form, like blog entries, news updates, etc. Like widgets, it can be web or desktop based.

By now, all of this should sound vaguely familiar since you pretty much come across widgets daily. However, to avoid confusion, let’s talk social networking sites, the real bread and butter to the lives of our cyber generation. Here, widgets triumph because consumers have the freedom to download their own “applications,” as these creative, fun, and often quirky, mini-programs are called. Most simply, applications are what makes that boring webpage you use everyday interesting and reflect your personal style. From finding and creating bumper stickers to sending your friend a virtual cocktail or gift — if developers have dreamed it, you can use it. In turn, the eclectic array of applications you pick over time help to create your cyber personality.

So how does one find these applications? That’s where Widgetboxes come in. These are websites that syndicates widgets and allow people to create, use, find and install widgets on their favorite social networks or start pages. Pretend you’re a TV channel exec and you’re looking for new programming to spice up your channel and create a distinct image and personality. You would seek syndicated shows to add to your lineup and add to your image. Similarly, as a social network user, you are your own TV exec and ultimately it is up to you which applications will convey your cyber-self.

While these entertaining applications keep users interested, inventive software developers and advertisers striving for profit really use widgets to the fullest degree.

What is viral marketing?
Today, widgets are used for ad distribution as well as media and entertainment social networking.
Because users hang out on social networking sites to do precisely that, socialize rather than buy products, the challenge has been to create new, effective advertising by using data about users, without alienating them. Basically, viral marketing operates on the principle that popular pre-existing social networks can spark brand awareness or sell a product by self-repeating viral processes. In turn, the recipient wants to voluntarily pass on the marketing message clip, which may be in the form of a video, interactive Flash game or E-book. All of these “messages” are actually web widgets. Based on the idea that human behavior lends itself to the “word-of-mouth” and “tell your neighbor” phenomenon, satisfied customers tell three people on average and dissatisfied customers tell eleven, on average. Thus, advertisers operate on the assumption that these web widgets are passed on enough, whether for better or for worse, to let the customer do the work of spreading the word about their service or product.


Recently, MySpace and Google joined forces and created a common set of rules for developers to create applications for social networking sites, allowing for a truly open, free flow of web applications. By turning closed platforms into public ones, the possibility for generating lots of revenue increases. Advertising and sponsorship dollars are gained by targeting specified demographics, which frequent certain pages. For example, one thousand new applications for MySpace have been created in the last two months in an effort to maintain users and pull in advertising revenue.

Think of this plan like the infamous Pyramid Scheme. In each round, investors are paid interest from the initial deposits of later investors. Eager early investors recruit friends, and growth happens exponentially, until the pool of potential investors is exhausted and the scheme collapses.

Similarly, widgets can also allow users to instantly and visually communicate with friends, anytime and anywhere. Welcome to your very own mobile media-messaging hub. It’s like having your own cyber secretary to organize and manage your cyber desk and schedule. After all, who has time to upload multiple times, to multiple sites, multiple times per week or even day?

Who makes these applications?
So now you’re wondering, who actually makes all of these wild and crazy applications? Leave it to Slide, the world’s largest creator of social entertainment applications. Founded by Max Levin CEO who co-founded PayPal at age 22, Slide boasts that “social networks benefit from increased activity, advertisers benefit from the exuberant audience and users can share favorite videos, send virtual lattes or even throw sheep at each other.” Not bad for a company that creates over 1 million new flash widgets each day in 200 plus countries worldwide! Both Slide and fellow competitor RockYou have recently vowed to consolidate and improve existing applications rather than create new ones. Consequently, they will change their focus to making money from advertisers. Essentially, Slide is the brains behind the SuperPoke, now also making waves on Myspace. FunWall and Top Friends are two of the most popular brainchildren to emerge from the Slide cyber warehouse.

What is Lifecasting?
We caught up with Adam Zbar, CEO of Zannel, an Instant Media Messaging and lifecasting services. Their slogan, “Your life in real time” is for people who want to broadcast their real life away from their computer. “In the old days, when you took a trip you’d take a bunch of pictures, or slide projector or computer. And now you’re traveling, and your friends can instantly see your photos and respond with a comment. By the time you get home, your friends have already gotten the inside scoops on the cool clubs you hung out at, the beach, anything that you did — they’re totally wired.”


How It Works
I want to broadcast the video I just shot of my friend. I’m already signed up with Zannel, Twitter, or a similar lifecasting site. Now, I’m light years away from a computer so I send the video via multimedia message to the lifecasting hub. This cyber hub then posts the video to all 5,10, even 15 of my various social networking sites, all with the send of a mobile message. This next wave of multimedia services is about people, especially the youth, sending videos and pictures in order to freely communicate with their friends anywhere, anytime. It’s the concept of consolidation in the blink of an eye. From any of your mobile devices with Internet browser capabilities, you can not only update your favorite social networking sites but also send out alerts and hold real-time conversations about the content. It’s a fascinating new form of communication, the key component being that it’s instant and highly visual. With the press of a button, your video of your niece’s first steps or of Kobe Bryant shooting the game winning shot can provoke big or small discussions, depending on your privacy settings, on your various social networks. Technically speaking, it is super easy and convenient to use because you don’t have to download anything.


What exactly is the feedback loop?
Besides the power of widespread broadcast multimedia content, the second most powerful aspect of lifecasting is the feedback loop. I post an update, you get it, you open it up, you respond back to me with a comment. The feedback loop is both exciting and addicting because of this instant interactivity. In our fast food, fast track, fast forward culture, things are happening so quickly that you want to share but hardly have the time before something bigger happens. Lifecasting allows you to keep living and stop taking the time out of the future to update your past. It’s no surprise that the more we multi-task, the busier our lives get, the lazier we are at updating. Intuitively, the mobile phone is about communication in the moment, capturing that moment in time and showing someone where you are at a specific moment in time, instantly! Then, there is the thrilling opportunity for an immediate flurry of discussion before you move onto the next big event.

Another lifecasting powerhouse, Twitter, uses a simple business model. Ask one question that sparks an infinite number of answers. “What are you doing?” By broadcasting timely yet basic and meaningful updates to friends, family, collegues, cyber citizens can stay in touch simply and quickly. A self-proclaimed “antidote to the information overload,” you as the cyber citizen are in control of how hyper-connected or disconnected you want to be at that particular moment.

So how private is all of this?
You, the user, create your personal Zannel account. Thus, you determine whether your account is public or private. You can create a channel that is public and that everyone can see as part of a private directory. Within a private channel, you can choose whether you want to allow one person or 100 people to view the content. It’s totally up to you who have access to what you’re creating. “The exciting thing is that we’re only scratching the surface with mobile phone’s potential,” comments Zbar.

What does the future hold?
It’s truly mind-blowing to think of the cyber power that these next generations have. Already the advanced media capabilities that widgets offer are much faster, frequent and more visual than ever been before. In the past, you had very separate services for all of your online needs and none of them were tied into a social network. “The future is to put all of those things under one hood, to create a multimedia update of what you’re doing, and allowing your friends the ability to get back to you,” Zbar explains.

By Maya Parmer

Widget Lingo
Following: When someone posts an update, you can set up an alert series that allows you to track your friend’s updates.
Instant Media Messaging: Using media as a message, which then is sent instantly. Term coined and trademarked by Zannel.
Viral Marketing: Coined by Harvard Business School Professor, Jeffrey F. Rayport, in his 1996 article “The Virus of Marketing.” Further popularized in 1997 by Hotmail’s email practice of affixing self-advertising in the outgoing mail of its users.
Lifecasting: The ability to broadcast all of your cyber updates instantly to your various social networking sites.
Feedback Loop: The ability to post comments and prompt discussion immediately on content uploaded to a social network.

Popular Applications
FunWall: With graffiti drawing, video, pic and link posting capabilities, this application allows your friends to express themselves (and what they think of you!) on your wall for all to see!
SuperPoke: Banned in the country of Turkey temporarily, this application takes poking up a notch by using virtual items to tell your friends how much you really like them!