Widget Wins Hinge on Social Networks

• Posted: Sunday, February 24, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Facebook, Market Survey, Mobile Content, Mobile Widgets, MySpace, Online Services

MySpace and Facebook are less than five years old. Will widgets stick around that long?

Widgets are little programs embedded in HTML pages that do things like find an online Scrabble partner in the wee hours of the morning.

The applications themselves may be small, but several of them have millions of users. Those are the types of numbers that get marketers' attention. But how many consumers are actually using them?

In an August 2007 survey, JupiterResearch and Ipsos Insight found that 43% of young people ages 18 to 24 used widgets and that another 35% of the same group were unfamiliar with widgets. The findings suggest that the older the person, the less likely he or she was to use widgets or be familiar with them.

Jupiter’s survey likely understates how many people use widgets. Given that 76% of Internet users ages 18 to 34 reported using a social network in a September 2007 survey by Dynamic Logic, it is highly likely that these people have added widget-based features to their profile pages but either do not know or do not care to use the term “widget.”

Additionally, comScore reported that, in November 2007, 81.1% of the total US Internet audience viewed a Web widget, a figure that does not include people who used applications on Facebook.

Read more - eMarketer

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