Desktop widget platforms
While social networks and blogs have their own web-based platform for widgets, the top four tech heavyweights have created their own platform for hosting widgets on your computer's desktop.
First, let's cover the basic concept here. Take the same rich media utility created in web widgets and actually present that web-based content directly on a computer desktop. This widget is downloaded as a mini-application within a tool that allows users to manage a group of widgets on their desktop.
These widgets are much more practical and personal in their utility. Take a look at Apple’s top five widget downloads, and you'll see a widget to search and play videos from YouTube, a widget to monitor your computer statistics (like your processor temperature and your internet download speed), a chess puzzle and a widget that shows movie trailers at theaters near you.
When you combine the personal nature of desktop widgets with the persistent presence created by having real estate on a user's desktop, these widgets are a hard bet to lose on. By finding a way to extend the utility of your brand in this technology, you are locking down a personal, everyday connection with the brand in a way few other media can match.
Even more than icing on the cake of this marketing equation are the aforementioned heavyweight players. Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google have all developed their own platforms and free distribution websites -- completely free advertising directly to the people that have these platforms on their computers.
Understanding each of these platforms is where the terminology really starts to bog down, so please hang with me as we navigate this sea of jargon together:
Apple
Having the most mature audience, Apple's widgets reside in the Apple Dashboard, a feature built in to the operating system that shows you all your widgets at the press of a button. The nice thing about Apple widgets for marketers is that while they don't command an audience as large as Microsoft, there are still many millions of users in the golden circle demographic of high HHI families who are extremely familiar with using widgets on the platform, and Apple promotes it heavily.
In fact, as Apple gains momentum from iPods and iPhones converting into desktop computer purchasers, making widgets from any web page viewed in Safari is only a few simple clicks away.
For the pro-am set that prides itself on creating home movies, websites and podcasts through built-in Apple software, there's also Dashcode, a program that makes building dashboard widgets significantly easier for novices. It's not a force yet but a very interesting integrated approach by a company that seems to always be a step or two ahead with an affluent audience that grows by the day.