Comments on: Widgets and the Web’s Amputation Ward http://changingway.org/2010/02/16/widgets-and-the-webs-amputation-ward/ Andrew weighs in on the ways in which the web and the world are changing Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:44:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Vox Stops: Six Apart? « Changing Way http://changingway.org/2010/02/16/widgets-and-the-webs-amputation-ward/#comment-8578 Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:29:13 +0000 http://changingway.org/?p=2071#comment-8578 [...] Vox is headed to what TechCrunch call the deadpool. I prefer the term amputation ward, since Vox is a limb, and 6A still has other limbs. That said, 6A went out on a limb in terms of [...]

]]> By: Andrew http://changingway.org/2010/02/16/widgets-and-the-webs-amputation-ward/#comment-7734 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:37:41 +0000 http://changingway.org/?p=2071#comment-7734 Rodney, thanks for sharing your story, unhappy though it is.

]]> By: Rodney Joyce http://changingway.org/2010/02/16/widgets-and-the-webs-amputation-ward/#comment-7731 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:54:45 +0000 http://changingway.org/?p=2071#comment-7731 Hey Andrew,

I was one of the faithful ClearSpring adopters who based their whole widgetsharing strategy on their platform. Anyone could grab their home poker league and embed it on Facebook or their blog/site (see http://www.pokerdiy.com/add-poker-widgets.aspx). Then came this news.. clearly a decision by upper management based on their AddThis acquisition.

A lot of us developers where very vocal about being royally shafted. But no one at Clearspring listened.

So now there are 5 days left till my live widgets go dark and despite hours and hours of investigation the only thing that I can find that is vaguely close is Widgetbox (I have JS/HTML widgets). It has a lot less functionality and I can’t get it to work because they pass params in their URL. I have tried so many others but still no joy.

Bottom line – even big companies can completely screw you over…

]]> By: Why Use Widgets Anyhow? | Social Media Fundraisers http://changingway.org/2010/02/16/widgets-and-the-webs-amputation-ward/#comment-7630 Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:57:08 +0000 http://changingway.org/?p=2071#comment-7630 [...] platform for sharing & distribution – so their previous platform is going away. (hat tip Andrew Watson’s interesting take on all this) If you build your own widget in HTML or flash and just need the sharing ability it looks like this [...]

]]> By: Justin Thorp http://changingway.org/2010/02/16/widgets-and-the-webs-amputation-ward/#comment-7486 Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:36:56 +0000 http://changingway.org/?p=2071#comment-7486 Andrew, it’s great to hear from you. Interesting post.

For us as a company, it was never just about widgets and was always about making it easy for anyone to share anything anywhere. Widgets was just the first part of the problem that we tackled. We’re really excited about where we’re going with the AddThis platform and making it easy to share anything (websites or widgets).

We’ve already had some really cool implementations, from the Gorillaz and Team USA. (http://addthis.com/blog/2010/02/09/what-do-the-gorillaz-and-team-usa-have-in-common/) We’re going to have even more to show off soon. :-)

About the term widget, yeah it’s a funny word. I define it, like you, as “a chunk of code that can be embedded on web sites.” But when a lot of people hear the term widget, they only think of the type of things that you put on your Apple Dashboard or iGoogle page. They don’t think of things like Flash video, which i’d define as a widget. So, as an industry, we’re going to have to find more efficient ways articulating that we want to make embeddable flash content shareable.

Would love to hear your feedback on where we’re going and where we can improve. Feel free to drop me an e-mail – justin@clearspring.com

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