Widgetbox

Today we want to put our blog spotlight on Widgetbox’s most popular widgets and shed some light on our syndication story. We define popularity by the number of subscriptions a widget has. Our five most popular widgets range from 1,802 to 954 subscribers each as I write this, and those numbers keep going up! Remember, 1,802 subscribers are not 1,802 eye balls – these are not desktop widgets. A web widget subscription exponentially extends its reach to the subscriber’s network of friends, readers and casual viewers. With over 39.5 million widgets served and climbing, you can get a sense of the reach our widgets are attaining on the subscribers’ blogs, web pages and social networks like MySpace.

Here are the current five most popular widgets on Widgetbox:

• Baby Ticker – The Baby Countdown Pregnancy Ticker
Babystrology built this widget on January 31st and in about 5 weeks watched subscriptions grow to 1,800. And, it continues to add hundreds of subscriptions each day. Each week as your baby’s due date approaches, the widget baby grows and develops to match the real-life pregnancy. Proud parents-to-be can’t seem to get enough of this widget.

• AddThis Social Bookmarking Button
AddThis.com put their widget in our gallery when they launched in October. It’s a widget that promotes your website or blog and works with all popular bookmarking services. AddThis.com is using Widgetbox as a widget “Amazon” to distribute their widget well beyond their own site. This week they got the TechCrunch spotlight, too.

• YouTube Videos
Bastawhiz, a.k.a. Matt Basta, put this widget in the gallery and watched it gain 954 subscriptions. Just as you would expect, this widget uses the YouTube API to display all your YouTube videos on your site. This widget is among 15 of Matt’s widgets in our gallery – many of them with hundreds of subscriptions and most of which focus on social networks. I can’t help but point out that Matt is 17 years old – it will be amazing to see where he is in a few years!

• There are two widgets on the most popular list that we built here at Widgetbox. We sometimes widgetize interesting or important web assets that haven’t already been added to our system. In this case, who could resist the classic Pacman (1,224 subscriptions), or an XSPF Music Player (1,101 subscriptions). Anyone wanting more games or a different music player can browse or search our categories and tag clouds for others.

So what makes these widgets so popular? (Widget developers, take note!)

• They are social – they’re built around things you want to share with your friends and readers, like the news of a pending baby, favorite websites and blogs, as well as videos, music and games.

• They are personalized – it is your baby’s due date, your website or your blog, your videos, your playlist – subscribers are using our multiple configuration options and expressing themselves with these widgets. We have found that the more personal the widget, the more users love it! Web 2.0 is all about expression and connection on the web, and these widgets exemplify that.

• They are simple and catchy – how can you resist: a replica of your baby’s development that starts moving in the third trimester – all within a widget! Or, a tiny badge for easy bookmarking. Or, your favorite videos stacked in a tower ready to share. The content combined with the form factor of these widgets make it easy for people to consume and share them.

• They are promoted – subscribers are talking about them. After they embed the widget on their blogs and web pages, they tell their readers and friends about it. They blog about it and link back to it often so that their readers will take note. Lots of “hey, check it out…” happening with subscribers. We attribute this phenomenon to a combination of the first three things we outlined here. The more social, personalized, and simple a widget is to use, the happier your users will be with it, and the more viral it will become.

Our growth in subscriptions is happening across the entire Widgetbox gallery—this is not simply a handful of the most popular widgets experiencing rapid adoption. Recently, we’ve seen an increasing number of widgets with multiple hundreds of subscriptions. This growth in subscription is a strong sign of our viral growth. It’s a sign pointing to a viral marketplace and clear indication that the power of our Widgetbox Syndication Platformâ„¢ is working. Our users tell us again and again how much they appreciate how easy Widgetbox is to use–something we have worked extremely hard to achieve–which helps both them and us syndicate our widgets and our message. In addition, our developers are using our Widgetbox Syndication Metrics to track and follow their widgets, which pushes this viral spread even further. We love watching the growth and spread of the Widgetsphere!!