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Social Widgets
I've spent a lot of time thinking about the MySpace music player and the YouTube video player. I believe these two "widgets" (if you can call them that) have been very significant parts of the success of those two services.
In the case of MySpace, the ability to simply click "add" when you hear a song you like and then you are broadcasting that song on your own page was pure genius. It brought the musicians to MySpace because they saw the viral aspects to music on MySpace. The more musicians came to MySpace, the more value accrued to being a member of the MySpace social network.
The founders of YouTube must have thought a lot about that trick because when they made their video player embeddable on a MySpace page, the MySpace community reacted swiftly, putting YouTube videos on their pages the way they put music on their page. They find something they like and they show it to their friends. Not a link, that's old school, they showcase the media right their on their page.
So what can we learn from the success of these two players? Well first, there is the lesson I already referred to. People don't want to link to media like audio and video (and photos), they want to run it right there on their own pages. They want to be the TV station, the radio station, the newspaper.
But we can also learn that the easier it is to add something the better. My gold standard is the MySpace music player. If you have the MySpace music player on your page and you find some music you like, you simply click "add" and its on your page.
Why don't the widgets/badges I have on my blog work like that? Why can't I click "add" on a ThisNext badge I see somewhere on the Internet and have the item I like immediately on my badge? Why can't I click "add" on some music I find on a Streampad badge I see somewhere on the Internet and have the music added to my Streampad player? You get the idea. Immediate add is nirvana and we need to get there for this widget/badge thing to really take off.
I believe that all of the functionality we currently have in social networks is going to emerge on the Internet at large. You won't need to be on MySpace to get a social music experience as long as you have an online identity somewhere on the net. You won't need to be on YouTube to get a social video experience as long as you have an online identity somewhere on the Net. Actually YouTube is a lot closer to where we are going than MySpace is. YouTube is an edge feeder. MySpace is not.
But you have to spend time in these social networks to see where the Internet is headed. MySpace is the AOL for blogging. It's where this stuff goes mainstream, but it's not where it's going to end up.
August 31, 2006 Venture Capital and Technology | Comments (15)
Comments
It has to be coming for sure.
Sweet last paragraph
Posted by: howard lindzon | Aug 31, 2006 9:17:24 AM
This is definitely one of the most interesting perspectives I have heard. It is very true, people want to be the boss of whatever media they are trying to showcase. It just goes to show you that the most popular websites will be the ones that allow the user to be an interactive participant of that site.
-Alex K
Posted by: Alexander Koretsky | Aug 31, 2006 9:44:53 AM
I set up a Myspace profile a couple of weeks ago for no other reason that to check it out - and then write a blog post dispelling some the of the fear mongering associated with Myspace.
http://www.odonnellweb.com/mtarchives/002674.php
I even made the AOL comparison.
Posted by: COD | Aug 31, 2006 9:46:24 AM
What inspires me is that a massive influx of people have just come online, and they crave content for their pages. If you enable them to personalize, if you free up your content and package it right, it’s easier than ever before to harness the viral effect.
Posted by: Jon | Aug 31, 2006 10:36:18 AM
Fred:
Although it is still under wraps, I believe that Ivan Pope's Snipperoo.com promises to offer that kind of seamless widget/badge functionality you are writing about above.
With any luck, we should know soon (right Ivan?).
Thanks, Tim Post
Posted by: Timothy Post | Aug 31, 2006 10:39:16 AM
Interesing insights Fred. "Feeding the MySpace beast" (as Pete Cashmore calls it) is definitely a great way to spread your brand.
We've been building a couple embeddable widgets on top of Dapper lately that you might like.
The first is Blotter, which provides an image with Statistics about your blog: http://www.dappit.com/dapplications/Blotter
The second, which is more related to this post, is Fidget, which embeds a random YouTube music video from one of your favorite bands on your blog, MySpace, etc.: http://www.dappit.com/dapplications/Fidget (we're still trying to get it to work in IE).
The underlying idea is essentially to make it super easy to embed cool content that is related to your interests on your blog, web page, etc. without having to manually find the clip or the data yourself (as you currently have to do).
Posted by: Jon A | Aug 31, 2006 11:02:11 AM
Since you and your brother have dragged me into this blogging addiction, I have become more familiar with the more troubling aspects of linking. Blogger's link wizard is good for text, but the photo and video upload is ALWAYS malfunctioning or down for days forcing you to embed using HTML, a total pain in the ass. This makes your assessment and posit real for me.
Posted by: Tony Alva | Aug 31, 2006 12:00:17 PM
With all due respect, I hate the extremely ugly pages that result due to the widget overload on myspace. Even you blog takes quite a bit of time to load with all the gizmos you have here. I enjoy them but I wish I only had to look at them when you add new content to them. For example, I already checked out most of the item in your shopcast widget. I don't need to look at it and I don't want it to load every single time. When you add new items to it, I would be more than glad to see what you added. Same can be said about Heavy Rotation and Streampad.
May be somehow letting users minimize, maximize and stuff like that would be really nice.
Posted by: Mo | Aug 31, 2006 12:21:04 PM
Yes, it is key to stickiness and virality.
I can, however, think of areas where I don't like having the easy-add functionality: and example is friend adding. Friendster later added, and LinkedIn always had, a challenge question (knowing the target's email) jammed into the friend-add process. It creates friction, sure, but such an obvious hole for spam. I love MySpace but am deluged daily with fakesters or marketers who are really diluting the meaning of "friend" add.
Posted by: Ken Berger | Aug 31, 2006 12:36:13 PM
tired: linking
wired: embedding
Posted by: chris | Aug 31, 2006 3:45:13 PM
Hey Fred,
I think you are confusing the difference between a site you already have a relationship with (UN/PW) vs. a site you casually found in your travels. MySpace is super simple since you are already on their site. Their player is no different then any other Wishlist, Bookmark, or Shopping Cart feature on the web. It simply looks different.
In order to be on another site and have it dynamically add content back to your own blog, you'd need a PW type relationship embedded in your browser. This is already being done with things like a Delicious bookmark extension for Firefox and so on.
What you are asking for is already here. It's just that the vendors you are promoting do not support those features.
Posted by: Fortino | Aug 31, 2006 8:28:54 PM
Developing a core competency in edge-badging/widgets is a must for any successful peer production system. I posted a few thoughts about the evolution of badges here: http://gordon.blogsmith.com/2006/08/31/exploding-badges-social-widgets-and-peer-production/
Posted by: Gordon Gould | Aug 31, 2006 9:36:16 PM
This post is dead on. Absolutely agree with howard that it has to be coming soon. Wouldn't be surprised to see two or three of these at the same time, but somebody will come up with some piece of the puzzle that's more obvious than the others and that one will excel.
Posted by: dick costolo | Sep 1, 2006 1:09:22 AM
Fred- I think, in the media side of things, the big step will be in the personalization of the channels you are talking about. I comment further on this at http://csertoglu.typepad.com/sortipreneur/2006/08/on_the_edge.html.
Posted by: Cem Sertoglu | Sep 1, 2006 10:48:23 AM
Fred,
Very insightful and provocative. I spent some time comparing and contrasting edge feeders (widget providers) vs. core platform companies like MySpace on my blog:
http://zenrob.typepad.com/zenrob/2006/09/disaggregating_.html
Posted by: Zenrob | Sep 4, 2006 11:34:58 PM
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