StickiWidgets

We came across the Google best practices via Sexy Widget. And, as with the previous post (5 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Widget Platform), here are the first three items. Visit Google for the complete list.

Google - Social Design Best Practices

1. Engage Quickly

Across containers, there’s a common tendency for a user to take a chance on an unknown application, and shortly thereafter remove it if no immediate value is found. The lesson to be learned from this interaction is that first impressions really do matter, and it’s necessary to engage the user quickly before attention is lost. To this end, we suggest you focus on the 30-second experience; before distracting the user with expert features or sending invites, slow down and give the user a simpler taste of what your application is about. Try the following:

• Show value and identity by making the purpose and core features of your application absolutely clear.
• Populate the application with fun or interesting content (especially content from friends) that makes for a browse-friendly experience.
• Make it easy for the user to add content, change settings and feel ownership of the application. This increases a user’s desire to keep the application on his/her profile.

2. Mimic Look and Feel

Across OpenSocial containers there can be a lot of variation in the look and feel of pages and profiles. When designing your application, it can help to attempt consistency with the container UI by using similar fonts, tabs and buttons.

In cases where applications strive for stronger identity, it can be good to create a UI look and feel which is slightly distinct but still aesthetically strong to play on a user’s tastes and need for self expression.

3. Enable Self Expression

The profile page in a container is often a representation of a user’s identity, interests and tastes. From the perspective of the owner, it’s a means for self expression and a starting point for exploring the social graph. From the perspective of viewers, it’s a place to learn, communicate, and find shared interests. Applications best take advantage of the profile by enabling self expression through common interests around entertainment, brands and groups. Self expression is also enabled through specific forms of communication like gestures and gifts or conversations around special topics.

Don’t forget our own 10 Things to Consider When Building Widgets.

Lawrence Coburn of Sexy Widget/RateItAll.com has an interesting summary of Sep Kamvar’s presentation on Google Gadgets/iGoogle at e.day yesterday. Head over to Sexy Widget for the full post.

Here are a couple of bullets and a comment from Lawrence.

• Sep talked about it as a virtuous circle - more gadgets attract more users, and more users attract more gadgets.
• He talked about the evolution as being: 1) hobbyists developing gadgets for their friends; 2) businesses developing gadgets for commercial reasons; 3) an economy rising around the development and consumption of gadgets complete with acquisitions and companies whose sole focus is Google Gadgets (Lab Pixies)

It sounds like Google is working on more ways to put Gadgets in front of people… with all the Facebook buzz, it’s easy to forget about Google Gadgets. Maybe we shouldn’t. - Lawrence Coburn

Lawrence himself was also a presenter at e.day. He has posted the presentation on his blog, Sexy Widget. It’s a great presentation on widget strategies, so go check it out. We are honored to have received a mention in the presentation. Thanks, Lawrence…

It’s been a long awaited announcement and it’s finally come. Clearspring has opened The Clearspring Community Platform and it’s free. We’ve had the luck of being part of the preview and it looks great. There are still things to add and some things to tweak but it’s a very polished system. For more information, check out the feature list, documentation, blog and forum.

A few things we really like about the platform. It was easy to add and configure a widget into the system. The interface was clean and stepped you through the process. Once the widget is added the power of the platform begins to show. The “Grab it!” feature allows anyone to easily get or push the widget to numerous web properties and social networks (11 at last count) or you can grab the code itself.

In addition to viral distribution of the widget through the widget, the Clearspring system can also publish the widget to existing widget galleries and start pages; currently Google Gadgets Gallery, Live Gadget Gallery , Netvibes Widget Library and Pageflakes Flake Chooser.

To wrap up all this widget goodness Clearspring tracks and reports on the widgets. This is great to actually be able to know how a widget is performing and where. There are 5 reporting categories and with more detailed reports within each.

1. Views: how many times the widget has been viewed
2. Unique views: how many individual users viewed the widget
3. Locations: where the widget is placed
4. Viral hubs: where the widget is being spread from
5. Geographic: where in the world are users viewing from

For developers there is also the beginnings of an API. It’s currently very sparse but it’s a good sign to see Clearspring developing an API for their platform.

And… If you’re large (lucky) enough to need an enterprise-class widget platform, there is the Premium Platform to consider.

While it’s not perfect and there a few more things we would like to see, Hooman and his team have done a great job overall and we look forward to more from Clearspring.