Rose tinted web?

I am trying to workout which phone to buy. I have a rather aged Sony Ericson at the moment. I like the look of the LG Viewty

Well I went to AOP widget forum today.

First up was Ivan Pope from Snipperoo with a 101 on Widgets and some dos and dont’s. It all boiled down to the fact that if you are expecting people to download a widget, then it has to be relevant and/or useful. At the end of the presentation he was quizzed on the legal issues surrounding widget distribution. The common sense answer was to practice good widget hygiene. Ivan will be hosting the www.widgetygoodness.com conference in Brighton next month.

Next up was a chap from ITV - Richard Waterworth. He had some interesting case studies on ITV.com - Belle de Jour. Their audience segmentation was interesting too - food for thought. There even seems to be a market for Coronation Street and Emmerdale widgets. Interestingly ITV.com don’t have any immediate plans to widgetise Friends Reunited at the moment.

David Ashbrook from Vodafone gave some insight into their thinking on Mobile widgets. It doesn’t sound as if there is anything immediate on the horizon with web widgets. I was interested by the continuation of the Vodafone as a content provider - it seems a bit of a throw back to the world of WAP. I shuddered at the idea of them sending me adverts, but then if they are promising a Google style free phone then I might tolerate a few ads. No answer as yet to the multiplatform testing issues associated with mobiles though so I suspect that their vision of an widget integration on the ‘desktop’ might be a little way off despite the huge mobile phone take-up.

Finally was Fergus Burns from nooked with more really useful and down to earth advice. He gave some stats on the Big Brother Facebook campaign which were pretty encouraging. It did enforce the whole - this has to be useful or relevant to my audience angle. The Open Social movement seems to suggest that widgets shouldn’t just come in a Facebook flavour.

It was a useful session and certainly helped me to think about how we should be looking at sharing information and resources in the future for best effect. I think there still remains a challenge in making these widgets profitable. I worry about the reliance on advertising - I do think that our audiences are becoming more and more advertising adverse . I don’t feel overt old style advertising sits very comfortably with the whole Social Media scene although there are undeniable opportunites to those who are able to tap in to interest groups and fans.

It is also my experience as a user that people often pick up and drop widgets on a whim - (apart from RSS feeds from essential sources). There is certainly something fun about trying something new so I think some of the challenges are about creating cost effective emphemera.

Well that’s what I am doing at the moment. It feels like a Shaun of the Dead evening somehow. I could do with a laugh!

I have noticed how late evening laptop use seems to stop me from getting to sleep. I think my brain starts whirring and then all sorts of things start going through my head. It’s nice to think that the old brain cell still works from time to time, but actually it’s nice to switch off…. so I am going back to my movie now!