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Jun. 14, 2007

Today, comScore announces the launch of its comScore Widget Metrix, a new service that can help track the usage of widgets across the Internet.

Presently, comScore tracks Web "widgets" which are specific data files that can be embedded into a site’s HTML code, and that can be displayed in a small viewing pane on the site

Web widgets are most often used to display customized or personalized content on a Web site, such as to share photos or music recommendations.

Additionally, Web widgets can also be found on blogs (Web logs), social networking sites and other personalized Internet properties.

Linda Boland Abraham, executive v.p. at comScore said “the recent explosion of user-generated content has helped create a global marketplace for widgets. Overall, comScore is very excited to be providing measurement for this developing content medium.”

Hooman Radfar, founder of widget delivery platform Clearspring says that “third-party audience measurement is critical to the emerging widget economy."

"Accurately measuring and assessing the "widget universe" is an important and preliminary step in allowing publishers and advertisers to realize the full benefits of the distributed Internet," said Radfar.

Radfar added "as one of the leading widget platforms, Clearspring looks forward to working closely with comScore to help drive widget measurement in the very near future.”

Overall, comScore’s analysis of the top 10 "Web widgets" worldwide suggests that photo-related widgets dominate the top positions.

Two months ago, Slide was the top widget provider with a worldwide reach of more than 117 million unique viewers, or 13.8 percent of the global Web audience.

Other top photo-related widgets included RockYou (82 million viewers), PictureTrail (31 million viewers) and Photobucket (28 million viewers).

As a side note, it should also be mentioned that FaceBook’s recent announcement that it was opening doors to third-party widget developers will likely have a large impact in shaping the "widget landscape" for the balance of 2007.

Globally, the current definition of Web widgets is defined as embedded Flash (.swf) Objects.

The comScore Widget Metrix™ service will evolve in its tracking of widget file types as the market dynamics and content delivery systems changes and transforms itself.

It should be noted that comScore's report focuses on the individual widgets, and not the platforms that deliver them currently.

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Source: comScore