Widgets have been the buzzword for some time now and some people believe that 2008 will be the year of widgets. As you all know, platforms like Google Gadgets, Yahoo Widget Engine, Apple Widgets; Social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and more recent initiatives of openness (Google Open Social, Facebook Open Platform) have created an environment for further growth of these tools with potential for extremely personalized content consumption for users, a simple targeted content-delivery vehicle for publishers, and an opportunity to create self-promoting viral campaigns for marketers. Recently I saw an interesting primer on metrics for widgets by Jodi McDermott, who leads analytics at Clearspring (a cross-platform widget tools company). Here’s the summary… The basics of measuring the viral spread of widgets narrows down to three core metrics:
1. Unique Visitors – a count of unique visitors
2. Views – the sum of individual requests to view a widget
3. Placements – the sum of unique instances of a widget
Unique visitors and views are old hat in the metrics industry, but tracking where the widget is viewed and travels introduces a new set of challenges. Placements are a new metric that identify the intersection of a unique instance of a widget and a URL. The unique instance factor is determined by a placement ID that is assigned by the widget-serving platform when the widget is initially seeded on a site and made available for sharing or when it is it shared from site to site. In measuring placements, we group them by domain in order to segment and identify patterns that plot the widget’s journey.
Let’s break this down with an example.
1. John views a widget on MySpace.com
2. Using the service menu on or adjacent to the widget, John shares the widget to his Facebook.com profile and also registers it as a Facebook application.
3. The widget is now on Facebook.com for John’s friends to view.
4. John’s friend Karen views the widget on his Facebook profile page and is also made aware of this new widget through her Facebook minifeed.
5. Karen chooses to grab the widget from John’s profile and place it on her profile as well. Once complete, she views the widget on her Facebook.com profile page.
Analytical results of this example:
· Unique Visitors: The widget had 2 unique visitors view the widget, John and Karen.
· Views: The widget had 3 views to the widget. One view was on MySpace.com by John and two views were on Facebook.com by Karen (one on John’s profile and one on hers).
· Placements: The widget had 3 unique placements – one placement of the widget on MySpace.com and two placements of the widget on Facebook.com.
· Directional flow:
o The widget was spread to Facebook.com.
o The widget was spread once from Myspace.com and once from within Facebook.com.
