Widgets add flair to dress up Web sites
(* Source: Ellen Lee *)
Some add a little sparkle. Others showcase photographs from a family trip. Still more entertain with music and video clips. Widgets are flooding the Web's social-networking and blogging sites, adding texture and personality to once-static pages. Think of them as the modern equivalent of decorating a locker door or bedroom wall. Widgets are programs like photo slide shows that sit on top of another site. Created by companies such as San Francisco's Slide and RockYou, they can be added to a social-networking profile or blog to decorate the page. Want to let people know about a favorite song? Install a widget from iLike that plays the tune. Widgets are adding a dimension to the social-networking phenomenon. More than 69.6 million people logged onto MySpace in July, according to comScore Media Metrix, and 30.6 million checked into Facebook, using the sites to stay in touch with friends and meet new ones. Widgets are helping make sure these members keep coming back. Social-networking sites are "big gathering places where you can talk," said Max Levchin, CEO of Slide. "Initially, talking is fun and great. It's like the first day of school. But then you have to give them games and things to pass their time." "People want to show off what their tastes are," said Jia Shen, co-founder and chief technology officer of RockYou. "You want to accessorize to show off who you are." MySpace helped popularize the phenomenon in 2004 by allowing members to trick out their profile pages beyond a plain white template. Users started publishing YouTube videos, posting pictures they had stored on Photobucket and decking out their pages with glittery, sparkling words. YouTube and other sites supplied a string of software code that users could copy and paste when they edited their MySpace page. Paul Reyes' MySpace page features photos, music he discovered and funny YouTube clips. "It's like your face to the world," said Reyes, a 21-year-old college student from San Francisco. "And you want to appear best to all the folks who look at you."
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