The 3 Reasons AOL is Interested in Widgets

Posted on April 22, 2008
Posted by Mike Berkley

In February AOL acquired Goowy Media, a widget platform with great technology, but not a tremendous audience when compared to competitors Clearspring and Widgetbox. This morning Jenn Van Grove published a great post documenting Goowy’s history and details behind its acquistion by AOL.

Here’s a snippet from that post, highlighting the primary reasons why AOL acquired Goowy and why AOL is bullish about widgets:

AOL is interested in widgets because they’re desirous, now more than ever, to allow users to spend their time online wherever they choose. Secondly, AOL is focused on driving the AOL brand to areas outside of AOL web properties. And, AOL is extremely interested in using widgets as advertisements (don’t forget about Platform A, AOL’s ad-buying platform). Essentially, AOL wants to leverage Goowy’s expertise around widget tracking to serve widgets as ads in traditional 300×250 ad space. With widgets as ads, the possibilities for creating more engaging content are limitless; widgets can be micro applications that play trailers, or allow users to download ringtones, widgets (as ads) can also be embedded anywhere, making the advertisers return on the investment increase exponentially if the content is good enough that users decide to take the particular ad/widget and share it elsewhere.

The widget-as-ad model is a concept we believe very strongly in, and is a critical component of SplashCast’s business model. In fact, I believe it is going to transform how brands think about advertising within social platforms, especially where ads can access the social graph. Peer-distributed advertising is a killer app. But social distribution is more “art” than “science”. How to leverage the social graph most effectively? How to hook and engage consumers? And most importantly, how to compel them to pass the ad along to all their friends? These are the questions we ask ourselves every day. It is where SplashCast has invested most deeply over the last year. I do not know how well Goowy’s widget platform performs in the context of social distribution, but the track records of other widget platforms (the one’s mentioned above) are not stellar in this regard. These widget platform companies have invested most their attention and resources on data tracking and reporting, rather than optimizing social distribution. In the end, we believe data reporting and tracking will be a commodity (easily built or bought), while social distribution is a “secret sauce”. We believe this is a primary difference between SplashCast and other widget platforms like Goowy.

By the way, Goowy’s CEO Alex Bard is a really great guy and deserves a ton of accolades for what he did with Goowy.

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