widgets

Widgets are all the rage lately, as evidenced by the avalanche at Facebook once the social networking site opened up to developers. Advertisers, too, are figuring out that if you want to get to the younger crowds, widgets are the way to go.

The Google Co-op offers a handful of nifty little tools that can provide you with all sorts of useful information (from the time, to the traffic, to the weather, and so on).  But a recent upgrade allows users to “have live data included in your Google searches.”

Social networking site Facebook is about to make things interesting. The company is expected to announce this week that it will open up its site to developers and Web services companies who want to connect on a more intimate basis with Facebook users.

Yahoo has announced extensive updates to its cross-OS widget platform, changes which are aimed at improving performance, increasing functionality, and providing new features and services to users. Of all the new releases in Widgets 4, the Flickr Widget is probably the one that shows the most promise. It allows users to display, upload and tag Flickr photos, as well as giving users the option of dragging and dropping large groups of photos into the widget and edit the tags and other information without needing to open a browser.

One of the primary reasons that MySpace has achieved such success in the realm of social networking is the ability for users to customize their profiles with layouts, music, videos, and assorted other widgets. As the number of MySpace users continues to grow, however, the company is becoming less inclined to allow third parties to use their social networking site as a marketing platform for their services. Last weekend, MySpace began blocking widgets from Vidlife, Stickam, Revver, and Imeem.

When on a social networking panel last week I said something that can be seen as stupid or insightful.

They have long supported charitable works by their employees and users, with the latest effort combining star power and Yahoo Answers to bolster the Up Close 2007 campaign to benefit Unicef.

As I was looking around the blogosphere this morning, I came across a number of good search engine articles I'd like to share with...