Analysis: How can brands exploit widgets?

To date, the UK's brand owners have been very cautious in their
sponsorship of these widgets. However, the involvement of Monetise will
open up these 143 million viewers to those brands, and that is a
potential audience that few advertisers can afford to ignore. The time
has come for UK marketers to start taking the widget seriously.

Karl Bloor, director at digital marketing agency Koko Digital, offers
this definition of a widget: "A widget is basically a standalone
application that users of social networks can add to their profiles,
allowing them to interact with the content provided by the widget owner.
Some widgets may have a corporate brand message and could be part of a
larger advertising campaign, whilst others can be completely independent
of any sponsorship and are developed just for fun or for social
interaction."

Not all widgets have to be on social networking sites. When Claire
Robinson, brand manager at designer maternity wear company Isabella
Oliver, was looking for an innovative way to promote her brand, she
decided to build a widget. She explains: "Because it's just putting our
brand in the space where people already are it's a soft, non-intrusive
approach. People can install our widget on their desktops and then
receive weekly tips during weeks four to 40 of maternity. Since launch
four weeks ago, we've had 2,000 downloads and enormously positive
feedback."

Sponsorship

While these self-developed widgets clearly have a role to play, it is
the potential for extensive and sticky exposure on social networking
sites that is leading many brands to really look into the potential of
widget sponsorship. Some have already begun to experiment. In January,
T-Mobile launched its MyFaves widget on Facebook. It allows users to
morph up to five of their friends to discover what they would look like
as one person.

Vanessa Potts, head of post pay, T-Mobile, comments: "Our research
showed that we all have an inner circle of around five friends. This is
why we launched the MyFaves tariff, and this application is designed to
promote that tariff, allowing Facebook users to decide who should be in
their top five while having a bit of fun morphing them together."

Like so much to do with web 2.0, it is easy to get carried away with
widgets. Although they have great potential, it is difficult to get it
right. For example, the T-Mobile application has just five daily users.
This compares with more than 3.6 million for FunWall, the application
with the most active users on Facebook.

The problem is, of course, that the morphing idea just isn't very good.
Do you really care what five of your friends look like morphed together?
There are thousands of Facebook developers and thousands of applications
available, and so for a widget to provide widespread exposure for your
brand you need to ensure it offers consumers something they actually
want.

Rather than building your own, like T-Mobile, you might want to
affiliate with an existing popular widget. Look at the list of top
applications on Facebook and you will see many obvious associations that
are yet to be exploited. However, you still need to ensure that the
widget has a clear link to your brand values, is not seen as intrusive
advertising, and does not lead to your brand being compromised in any
way.

The greatest challenge for social networks has always been to monetise
the concept, and while widget sponsorship may be the way for it to do
that, it is by no means certain that it will succeed. For brands, there
is just as much that can go wrong as can go right. For now, they may be
well advised to proceed with caution.

- Brands use widgets to inform and entertain consumers across the
board

Cadbury has created a game, called 'Room with a Goo', to promote Creme
Eggs. In the game, players have to stop eggs from being smashed, blended
and splattered. There is a widget on Bebo, in which users can destroy or
rebuild each others' Creme Eggs by performing virtual activities, such
as hugging or karate-chopping the eggs.

Mydeco has created a widget called 'My dinner party'. It invites users
to create the best dinner party in history by encouraging Facebook users
to invite the beautiful, the damned, the intellectual and their friends
around a chic designer table. This can then be sent on to friends to
comment and rate the party.

Jamiroquai allow their fans to keep updated with tracks, tour dates,
video releases and so on, through a widget that can be taken to their
social networking site of choice. There are clear e-commerce
opportunities here - if a user is listening to a track through a widget,
they can easily be encouraged to click and buy.

JustGiving allows users to create a widget to place on their site, blog
or social network. The widget provides a running tally of how much money
they have raised.

LinkedIn's widget allows people on partner sites, such as
BusinessWeek.com, to access LinkedIn networks of people mentioned within
articles and features without leaving the site.

STA Travel's widget allows users to share their travel videos. The
content is overlaid with light branding.

Music site Last.fm allows users to take the last five or ten songs
they've listened to on its site and put them on their profile on a
social networking site. In January 2008, these widgets brought 19
million music fans to the site.