Widget Metrix from ComScore

ComScore has announced Widget Metrix, a new service to track the usage of widgets on web sites and blogs. What are widgets? I have several examples of widgets on my blog; things like Lijit (search), MyBlogLog (readers photos), Feedburner (subscriptions) , Sitemeter (traffic stats), and Criteo (blogroll). Other examples are things like stock tickers, news feeds, and of course, Google's AdSense widget which delivers ads to web sites and blogs. See my earlier post on ClearSpring for more background on widgets.

The Wall Street Journal has a story on the widget economy and produced this graphic of the ComScore results.

I am very surprised at the initial measurement results. I would have guessed Photobucket to be the most used widget given its enormous usage on MySpace. Other surprises...YouTube doesn't show up in the top 10 but Brightcove does? Congrats to my friend Jeremy Allaire from Brightcove registering 16.9 million unique visitors. Impressive!

My guess is that the stats are incomplete because ComScore only tracks flash based widgets. See this definition of widgets from ComScore.

The current universe of widgets is defined as embedded flash (.swf) objects. The comScore Widget Metrix service will evolve in its tracking of widget file types as the market dynamics and content delivery systems change.  The report currently focuses on the individual widgets, and not the platforms that deliver them.  Desktop widgets are also not included.

Widgets are growing in popularity. Companies like Clearspring have figured out how to deliver a widget platform that leaves control of the content and monetization in the hands of the content owners, but still allow users to freely use the widget anywhere they want. Viral growth while still maintaining some control. Sounds like a winner to me.

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Comments

[wanderingstan]

Hey Don,

Last month I did the first survey of widget popularity. You can see the results in the Lijit blog: (Guess who was #1?!)
http://www.lijit.com/node/352

I'm actually working on the second round of results this afternoon. Seems everyone is now getting on this bandwagon!

-Stan

[Parag Mathur]

Don,

I enjoyed reading your trail of posts about widgets. Some comments..

-I'm not sure users are free to use widgets created using Clearspring "anywhere" they want especially if they have incorporated some form of monetization. MySpace especially is extremely sensitive to people making money off of their platform (remember when they blocked Photobucket).

-Most of the widgets allowed nowadays are flash based which is a significant restriction. We have been looking into incorporating ZCubes (http://www.zcubes.com) experiences as widgets into other sites but have been restricted by the use of flash. We would like to be able to embed inside of an IFrame as an example but aren't allowed by MySpace etc.

[John Dowdell]

Hi, if ya'll could use "Adobe Flash" instead of "flash", then other people will be sure we're not talking about storage memory or camera features, thanks.

(It's sort of like how use of the phrase "M$" for Microsoft is an unprofessional use of a brand... no big thing, it's just helpful to be straight on the terms.)

tx, jd/adobe

[Richard Bottoms]

While our AlterVille gadgets support Flash, and Java, we do believe that for maximum usability CSS+DHTML is often the way to go.