Nick Is Against Widgets

Nick Denton has come out against widgets and listed five reasons for that stance on Valleywag.

And he lists this blog as an example for one of his reasons:

2. A sluggish page is a bad page. A page only loads as fast as the slowest widget. All those annoyingly flickering messages in the status bar of the browser -- Read, Connecting to, Waiting for. I blame widgets. Fred Wilson's blog is a laboratory for these web modules: the venture capitalist's site is said by Alexa to be among the slowest on the web, with a load time of 11 seconds.

Well, you can read this blog in a feed reader and avoid the widgets entirely. And now that I load the center column first, you can read the blog on the web and be off to another page before all the widgets load (and Alexa is wrong, it takes a lot longer than 11 seconds for that to happen).

But Nick is missing the point of widgets entirely. You can't build a business on widgets alone. But if you have a business; YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, MyBlogLog, Digg, etc, etc, you can get distribution on other's pages with widgets. It's a content and brand distribution strategy.

Maybe Gawker blogs will never carry widgets because Nick is a purist and believes that widgets are "a violation of blog principles". I'd like to see where those prinicipals are written down, because I missed them and want to know what other principals I am violating.

Comments

[jim santo]

I'm not going to take a stance for or against widgets here, but I will point out that, if it takes 11 seconds or longer for your widgets to load in the US, it likely takes much longer than that elsewhere in the world.

I recently completed a test of global site performance for my employer's site. The results were eye-opening. The home page loaded in 2 seconds in the US -- not amazing, but not shabby. But in Europe it took an average of 8 seconds, in Asia 15 seconds, and in mainland China, 30+ seconds!

It's called latency: the farther you get from the source of your site, the longer it takes to deliver the content -- sometimes an infinity. That's why content delivery networks like Akamai exist.

But unless your widget providers are also using a CDN, your site is hijacked by their global latency (not to mention their local server performance but that's another story).

It was smart to put all your widgets in the right column, since web pages load from top to bottom and left to right. That has to help. But given that the Web is a global service with a global audience, it behooves all content providers to
be mindful of global performance and not be blinded by a US-centric view that assumes everything is OK everywhere.

[Stephen L. McKay]

Fred,

It’s like most things in life. Moderation is the key. When advertising makes the experience less enjoyable due to overload lets say, it may actually limit the potential revenue. I don’t think people will stop reading A VC due to the long load time, however this may not be the case for other good blogs that do not have the same level of rich content posted on a daily basis. I like widgets, but I would use widgets cautiously.

[Nick Denton]

Hey Fred, only singled out your site because it was cited in that New York Times piece. And you run a lot of widgets to test them out, for yourself, and your readers. Sorry I didn't have space to say that in the Valleywag item. As for the use of widgets to gain distribution, I think I said that in the item: "Let's get something straight here. A widget is an affiliate marketing program, no more, no less." The problem comes when a site's entire business rests on a trojan horse strategy.

[AlFromChicago]

Fred --

The arrogance of the post is pretty astounding -- especially about "blog principles."

My take on bottom line is this: You as the author of your blog write it for your purposes -- and one of your express purposes is to experiment with new services and widgets and get feedback from users. Who is to tell you that you're "wrong?"

Second thing I would say is all of us Publishers who are seeking to grow an audience and build viable business are looking for the right combination of design, utility that really meets the needs of users. I think the value of widgets will be decided on a market by market segment by segment basis -- and people will "vote with their feet" on whether they find it useful.

I think he was just being real smart by provoking you -- nothing like a little controversy to drive traffic!

[Michael Long]

"...you can get distribution on other's pages with widgets. It's a content and brand distribution strategy."

Care to explain that remark? Because it's true it's a "content and brand distribution strategy", but only in the sense that THEY are getting free distirbution on YOUR site.

Secondarily, I have nothing against putting a half dozen or so well-choosen widgets on a page, and perhaps rotating them or swapping them out on different pages. But by putting everything and the kitchen sink on one page you're adding so much visual clutter that they stop becoming sources of information and simply become a source of noise to be ignored.

Third, quite a few of them lie well below the main content, and as such are never seen. Why slow down your page loading content people will never scroll down to see?

All in all you're correct in one thing. I use the feed and, aside from this comment, never visit the site at all... because I know what happens when I do.

It may be a "content distribution strategy", but when your strategy actively drives away page views....

[Sebastien Provencher]

"You can't build a business on widgets alone. But if you have a business; YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, MyBlogLog, Digg, etc, etc, you can get distribution on other's pages with widgets. It's a content and brand distribution strategy."

I agree with you that widgets are a great to atomize/de-portalize your content and functionalities. I also believe though that you can build a business around a plug-in or widget. There are many slow-moving ecosystems out there that could benefit from widgetization and first-mover advantage might give you the edge in building up a network effect.

[ivan]

I think there is a misunderstanding of what a widget is here. To us, a widget is simply a chunk of code embedded in a page that pulls in some content. On that basis, you can't really categorize widgets as good or bad - it all depends on what they are delivering.
Also, you can't say that you can't build a business around a widget - we will have to see, but I imagine that there will be plenty of powerful content widgets around over the next few years. Combining these will provide the basis for quite a few widgets.
We can take this one step further and suggest that Fred might write his blog using a platform with no public interface but RSS. Then he would take the RSS feed, embed it in his choice of widget, embed this widget within the public platform of his choice and hey, the blog is a widget/the widget is a blog. Why do this? Because then the choice of platform and content is entirely within your choice - and you can swap from platform to platform at will - or even use multiple platforms simultaneously. Again, why? Beause that may be the most efficient way to organise content.

When Denton says: "Let's get something straight here. A widget is an affiliate marketing program, no more, no less." he is talking nonsense. A widget is a slug of available content, no more, no less. But the potential of that content is infinte.

I say, Widgets are not a distraction from content, they are the content.

[Leigh]

Affiliate Marketing 101 from Wikipedia:

"Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying a finder's fee for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per sale), or any combination."

Unless Fred is getting paid for the widgets (which i assume he is not), don't get the affinity program comparison -

[lawrence coburn]

I think it's pretty clear that publishers are demanding the freedom to make their pages as ugly, as slow, and as cluttered as suits their personal taste. If you don't give them that freedom, they'll take their publishing business elsewhere. If you don't provide them the tools to add to that clutter, they'll get those tools elsewhere.

(and i think a lot of the clutter is pretty damn cool)

[Mark Ghuneim]

Unless 100% elegant which is rare.
They are disruptive to the user and visitor.

I open a dozen blogs at once with tabs...

this one still loads while I have read the
other 11. (i am a quick reader)

I often abort a page due to load time and
almost all the time it is because of a widget or some crazy JS call.

This is akin to a plague for speed surfers like myself. I wonder if these pages would
render with a txt browser like lynx

[Noel McKinney]

I would certainly miss the social dimension of blogging and blog reading if widgets disappeared. As Fred mentions, if there's a site I want to read but it contains widget annoyance, I read it in my feed reader. Nick's other observations take care of themselves via free markets and choice.

[Chris]

Both Fred and Nick make comments with which I take issue, and they are:

1. "You can't build a business on widgets alone." (Fred)

2. "A widget is an affiliate marketing program, no more, no less." (Nick)

#1: How are Flickr and Photobucket successful OTHER THAN their widget-esque nature? Sure, they have sites, but it's these services' syndicated nature that distinguishes them from other photo-sharing services. As noted by Ivan (in above comment), the content IS the widget -- and the potential of that content (or functionality, I would add) is infinite.

#2: Some widgets provide complete experiences within the widget, and some enhance functionality of sites who allow them -- categorizing them as "affiliate marketing" disparages the value they add to sites and consumer experiences.

A great example of a widget "beyond the affilate program" is here:

http://www.myspace.com/theformat

If the entirety of consumer experiences are being completed "within the widget," why NOT build a business based on widgets alone?

[greg cannon]

Last year the big argument was about how MySpace violated every Web design principle. But the counter argument -- that bad design is kinda of the point since it's about individual expression -- and monster growth won out. Same thing here. A blog, no matter how spare or gaudy, is about personal expression. Hopefully a blogger (or ones who want readers anyway) knows those readers pretty well and applies to widgets the same standard that should govern everything the decision over everything else they put on their blog, from posts to ads...does it provide any value for someone who honors me with their time and attention?

[Rick]

Widgets are not new. Most ad systems, like Adsense, are essentially "widgets".

[Rick]

Nick's publishing system is basically one big-ass widget.

If he wants to be a traditionalist, the sites should just be straight static wordpress sites.

[jeremy liew]

Two points:

1) Slamming widgets because they distract from the content when put in blogs is like slamming TVs because they distract from driving when put in cars. But TVs belong in the home. And widgets belong in social networks. They are about self expression, and that is what the 10s of millions of users of the social networks want. I posted on this last night at the Lightspeed blog at http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/01/19/the-53651-strike-back/

2) Widgets have largely been used to date as a distribution mechanism/affiliate model to build a destination. There is a long history of building businesses on distribution (Google did it with distro deals on AOL and Y! for instance) and the social networks drive adoption today like portals did last go round. A little different in that instead of doing one deal with a company, you need to convince lots of users to adopt your product, but same principle. But I do believe that there are other paths to widget business models other than straight distribution; i talk about some options at the Lightspeed Blog at http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/01/07/whither-widgets/

[eric hebert]

Widgets are a natural evolution of blogs. Nick will have to deal with it.

[Andrew]

I understand the point of company created bling but as a reader they annoy me and nothing is more annoying than a slow page. Maybe someone will create a widget script that wraps wigets (wigetwrapper) so you can place one code for all wigets so there is less of a loading issue.

[Bradley]

Your Fredness,
I love the widgets. I often look here for the widgets and your reviews of same.
I don't care if you pull some, just keep finding new ones.

[Timothy Post]

Public vs Private widgets.

Self-expression vs. Self-organization.

I'd like to make a distinction between the current state of the widgetsphere and how I believe it might evolve.

Currently, widgets (snippets of embed code which live on host websites, blogs, MySpace pages, etc) pull data from other third party web services and are generally forms of self-expression.

People, like Fred, paste widgets onto their websites as a way of sharing their interests, tastes, identities, etc. This is fine but I think what we are witnessing, and Fred's blog post here is an inflection point, is a point of diminishing returns.

The value of these public widgets (self-expression) is losing some of its sex appeal and novelty. It's getting boring.

What's the next step for widgets? I would argue that private widgets which serve as mini-data containers or short-form websites to help us manage and organize the overwhelming amount of data who have all accumulated in our personal lives by living in this modern world of ours.

For instance, I would bet that on Fred's most recent trip to Italy he utilized a dozen or so (perhaps more) membership relationships with various service providers, including airlines, rental cars, Eurorail passes, hotels, shops, insurance, credit cards, travelers checks, etc.

How did Fred organizer all the requisite data associated with those relationships? Plastic cards? Paper sheets printed out the night before he departed? Hand-written notes inside the cover of the book he brought along? Is there a better way?

Yes, I believe the answer is through the collection of custom personalized widgets. I should have a Jet Blue card which is customized with all my account information. It's not practical for me to boot up my Macbook Pro at the check-in counter, surf to Jetblue.com, log-in to my account, and access my membership information.

What would be better is to have a widget already configured with that information sitting on my iPhone. With a couple finger flicks, I'd have access to all that information.

Plus, barcodes are the secret sauce of these new personal widgetcards. Barcodes will enables data to be transferred seamlessly between my cell phone and the service provider. Barcodes will also allow for a high degree of confidentiality.

Widgets needs to be freed from websites and go mobile. Widgets are the perfect form factor to go mobile with Fred and family. As I have written about recently on my blog Flyingseeds.com, mobile widgets on the new iPhone and other internet connected cell phones will be the platform of choice 12 months out.

I actually think that the current trend of pasting widget embed code on internet websites will prove a distraction rather than the end game.

Widgets are really "short-form" websites. Why bother to go to your American Airlines Admirals Club account page on the internet when you could simply open a widget created by the Admirals Club.

The missing piece in the evolution is a web service which offers an "address book" for all of these personalized mobile widgetcards. Fred's post proves that a blog is not the ideal storage container for widgets.

So while we are still thinking through the future of widgets, let's keep thinking outside of the "widgetbox" and not get stuck thinking of widgets as only little boxes of self-expression which live on html pages.

[Doug Karr]

I read your site from Google Reader every day... no problems. And, your content loads before your sidebars so what's the problem? Go, go Gadget! Er.. Widgets!

Nick better get used to the idea of widgets. It's absolutely the future of the web.

[Nic Brisbourne]

People are getting pretty religious about this whole widget thing!!

I dig the way you load the central column first. Must look into that for my site.

[lawrence]

Nice post Tim - great stuff. Private widgets plus mobile devices have a ton of potential.