"My interest in distributed web businesses – web businesses that don’t reside on a single domain, but instead span across various web sites – stems from necessity. While the long tail of the Web is getting longer, so is the percentage of overall pageviews absorbed by the head of that tail. If your site isn’t one of those elite sites at the head of the curve, you’re most likely losing ground every day. In this environment, you either find ways to put your content / functionality / service in front of people where THEY are, or you wither away into irrelevance. At a macro level, there are four broad strategies that can be undertaken to get" Join discussion...

"Like just about everybody else, preteens and teens tend to reject banner ads and other obtrusive forms of online advertising. But an online study suggests younger internet users also tend to be more accepting of using ad-supported widgets and other downloadable promotions that can be tied in to social networking, according to the WSJ. The online survey, conducted by Grunwald Associates and underwritten by MySpace/News Corp, Microsoft and Verizon, looked at more than 1,200 kids ages 9 to 17 an Join discussion...

"Google Gadget Ventures is a new Google pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets." Join discussion...

"In this post we look at an unlikely widget company, Random House Publishing. A quick look at their web service and the widget is enough to realize that the company "gets it". But a deeper look reveals that Random House not only has gotten the widget bug, it also has a broad and solid strategy around widgets. The publishing giant is using widgets to build its presence and brand awareness everywhere online." Join discussion...

In this post we look at an unlikely widget company, Random House Publishing. Join discussion...

For eBay sellers, Cooqy provides fully customizable showcase widgets; For shoppers, Cooqy is the ultimate way to shop eBay Join discussion...

"Widgetbox have announced the wide-spread adoption of its new Widgetbox Remote Gallery feature which eases the transition to an open platform for social networks. The Widgetbox Remote Gallery feature enables social networks to embed a select number of widgets from third party developers and provide access to the over 10,000 widgets from the Widgetbox main gallery, giving their users the ability to easily find and use widgets to customize their profiles, blogs and web pages." Join discussion...

I'd estimate that over $250 million dollars has been invested in widget companies during the last 18 months. And just as every consumer-facing Internet company has developed a strategy to leverage Google, they have also developed strategies to “widgitize” a portion of their application for distribution via Myspace. Join discussion...

"There is a very interesting widget that was released by SpringWidgets specifically for MySpace. This is not a unforeseen partnership and we’ve pointed this out in the past. SpringWidgets is developed by Fox Interactive Media which links them to MySpace and the new Fantastic Four movie (20th Century Fox). The widget is actually pretty cool. A screenshot is provided but it only works properly on MySpace so we did not embed it." Join discussion...

"I'm sitting here trying to digest all of the Facebook news and analysis in order to understand what it really means for widget publishers. I'm not there yet - I have some questions out to a few folks to get some clarification, but I will post more when I feel like I have a better handle." Join discussion...