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Facebook Apps or Widgets, Which Are Better?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 27th, 2007 3:49 PM

Earlier today, USA Today published an article about widgets on the web. The interesting thing is that many of the “widgets” that they referenced were actually Facebook applications. Are widgets different than Facebook applications? I sure think so. According to Wikipedia, a web widget is “a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.”

The key is that a web widget is portable. Among the top applications on Facebook, the majority appear to be widgets. I don’t actually think all of these applications are actually widgets though since they can’t be exported to other sites. Content that appears on your Facebook profile won’t be able to show up on your blog. In theory the “Fun Wall” application should be able to display content posted by people that visit your blog as well as your Facebook page.

The main point of the article was that widgets have been a great way for many unsuccessful web entities to increase their exposure. Widgets help you quickly extend your distribution throughout the social web. It’s as easy as that. Facebook applications and other social applications are not as easily distributed. So is it better to build a social application or a widget? I think applications are better because you can get a larger user base per instance. Conversely, the net number of impressions of a widget can significantly dwarf a social application. So which do you prefer, widgets or applications?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    Nick, I recently posted on this as well - there is definitely a distinction between the two. That being said, the distinction is becoming murky.

    I think that widgets are a more effective breadth strategy today given that only one platform really supports social applications - Facebook.

    Social applications require a deeper investment than widgets in many cases, so my guess is that the two markets diverge and grow together. There will be many intersecting cases, but that's my thinking...
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    Another key difference between Facebook apps and Widgets (especially OpenSocial Widgets) is that Facebook apps are currently largely focused on trivial and/or fun things, whereas the pool of Widgets is mostly (RSS) content aggregation plus some utility.

    In my blog post at http://socialnetworking.activestate.com/2007/11..., I examine this difference a bit further.

    I'm curious: why do so many of the popular Facebook apps focus on trivial pokes, food fights and vampires, while most widgets simply aggregate content?
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    Nick,

    A widget isn't any different from a Facebook application, what is different is how the code hooks into the base platform. For a widget to hook into Facebook it hooks into Facebook's open platform using FBML and FQL, but from that point on it is just like a widget in a widget bank on iGoogle or Freewebs. I don't think that just because you have an extra layer of code that you are hooking into it deserves a different name. Similarly, if you insert a widget into your blog (like the MyBlogLog widget) it has to hook into the code that your blog is written in which is why most widgets have adaptations for different base publishing platforms like WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, etc.

    Bob
    Jobmatchbox.com

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