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Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed an enormous surge in news articles and blog posts about widgets. The articles range from those curious about widgets to those that hail widgets as the online savior of news services.  

Eric Schonfeld of Business 2.0, in his article CBS Goes Widget Crazy reports that CBS is signing deals with new widget-making partners in order to form new avenues of content syndication and distribution. From Schonfeld’s article: 

You will notice that most of these are widget companies or are involved in some form of syndication.   I spoke today with Chris Marentis, the CEO of Clearspring, one of the new CBS partners.  Clearspring creates widgets for Websites like the NBA and movie studios.  Since the startup launched last November, it has served up 3.5 billion widget views, or about 50 million a day.  CBS might use its technology to create a widget for each show that anyone could then take and embed into their MySpace page or blog. 

At RedHerring, Tomio Geron has an article entitled “News Media Wild for Widgets: Gannett, others seek new ways to distribute content across Internet”. The article details how companies such as Gannett are hoping to “allow the group to distribute its brand and content across the Internet and reap advertising dollars in the process.”

It’s no news that traditional media companies are scrambling to find new revenue channels to stay competitive. Syndicating content to multiple sites could be a great way to enhance visibility of content. Whether that will lead to increased revenue is another question.

In the RedHerring article, Kerry Oslund, VP New Media at Gannett is quoted as saying: 

We have had very deep discussions about viral strategy and our content, whether to trap it in our walled gardens or move it out across the internet. That decision hasn’t been made yet.

I think this is a great point and an important question. Is a media company’s content it’s product, or is it just a means to an end that is an ad click? Either approach brings new questions to whether using widgets can produce the right result.

Independent of how they view their content, media companies are going to make widgets. It’s going to happen. What was once a question of “Are people actually going to use widgets, or is this just a passing fad?” is now “Widgets are out there. They’re going to be used. Now how will companies use them to make money?”

Filed under: widgets