It seams like everywhere you look online nowadays, all you find are widgets!
So you may well ask "What the hell's a widget?"
Above is dictionary.com interpretation of the word, but in the realm of social media its idea is, well, anything really! Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and Google all provide widgets of one sort or another.
Most of the time a widget is a small component of a web page. It's a piece of code developed by one company/website which is then run on many other websites in a hope to allow visitors to connect easier. For example, on our blog you’ll find 2 widgets we are using, one of them is a Twitter re-tweet button and the other is a Facebook share button.
These work in much the same way as most social media widgets work, they are small HTML & Javascript snippets of code your web designer can simply drop onto your pages and off you go. You're using a widget!
However, the plethora of widgets available just seams to be a little overwhelming and in many cases completely useless and unnecessary. I can imagine in many companies trying to tap into the social media market, the directors sit around a table together with the designers and developers and they say "We have to make it different and stand out in the crowd, any ideas?" to which some bright spark says, "I know, lets create a widget!"
I may sound a little negative here, but I’m trying not to be, honest. Just create widgets with purpose! So I have listed a few of our favourites below, please feel free to comment and let us know yours also.
Re-Tweet Button: http://tweetmeme.com
Facebook Share: http://facebook.com & http://www.fbshare.me
Social Networking Components by Google Friends Connect http://www.google.com/friendconnect
RSS & ATOM Feeds: http://feedburner.google.com
Gravatars (Used in blog comments etc.) http://en.gravatar.com
