SpringWidgets by Fox Interactive Media
Nov 06 2006Saw a post over a TechCrunch about Fox Interactive Media’s SpringWidgets so we went to check it out. This offering is interesting. While there are plenty of other widgets platforms out there, Michael Arrington points out that SpringWidgets is currently the only one that is bridging the gap and targeting both the desktop and web.
There are only a handful of widgets listed on the site, still in Beta. Two of the widgets are below, Scoreboard and RSS Reader. SpringWidgets provides an easy to use configuration tool to set the size of the widgets. We have not downloaded or tested the desktop engine or the development API so those will be left for another review.
Overall, the site and widgets are easy to use and do what they are intended for. We will have to wait and see if they are able to develop more interesting widgets and if the developer community picks up on their platform.
It will also be interesting to see what Fox is willing to push through their new platform. We think that there is a huge opportunity for Fox to leverage their “content”, such as the Scoreboard. There is already a following for their existing media; sports, shows, movies, etc. Fans and bloggers will jump at the chance to have these widgets providing official content along side their own, a hockey blog with the NHL Scoreboard widget or a TV show fan and a widget with Fox supplied content on their MySpace profile.
Update (2006.11.6): SpringWidgets is also getting some coverage over at Read/WriteWeb and Mashable.
hi…since you’re a feedburner publisher, you should try out the “branded” springwidget rss reader…hope you like it!
[...] For the hard core fan that has the technical knowledge to customize their blogs or run their own sites, there is even better news. While the exact usage details still need to be seen, these videos (using the Google Search API) and the NHL Scoreboard widget (previous coverage) will give your blog/site more features and content for your readers. [...]
We’ll have to give it try.
[...] get the widget into the distribution platform. We even commented about the Fox backed benefits in our original review of SpringWidgets. The idea that the widget platform and in-house developers could have access to the myriad of Fox [...]