Using Yahoo! widgets in business

About half a year ago, I met Yahoo! Widgets , and this technology immediately fascinated me with its ease of development and user friendliness.
I went deeper into coding, spent several sleepless nights, spun on a local forum and made a widget that was honored to be published in the Yahoo gallery. Along the way, I read what they write about Yahoo! Western marketers Widgets and discussed emerging ideas with several leaders of Russian Internet projects, so now I want to share some thoughts about their practical application.

In the west, Yahoo! Widgets are actively used for marketing purposes. Here are a couple of examples.

Animal Planet TV channel made the " Animal Planet Killer Clips " widget, with which you can watch videos of predator attacks on their victims.


To date, the widget is loaded 11 288 times.
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Acura , Honda's North American division, introduced the " Acura RDX Traffic " widget, showing traffic jams and traffic information on a map.



Downloaded 48,401 times.

And Toyota made a widget " Toyota FF Pick-Ups ", in which American football is adjacent to the advertising of cars.


He downloaded 62 970 times.

And Honda, Best Buy, Disney and even Pfizer have their own widgets.

So, what is Yahoo! Widgets in terms of business?

• Great opportunities in terms of functionality: from inserting Flash to accessing the operating system.
• Reducing development costs due to ready-made modules included in the engine.
• Attractive design.
• Easy installation of widgets (though only taken to the gallery Yahoo).
• Name and reliability. This technology developed by a well-known company is not the first year. It can be said, "veteran" of the world of desktop widgets.
• Duration of contact with the user. Yahoo! Widgets work regardless of whether there is an Internet connection, and the user stays with you, even closing the browser window: from the moment the computer is turned on until it is turned off. However, this is inherent in all desktop widgets.

But not without flaws.

• Proprietary technology. Your users will need to install a program that does not belong to you (the engine itself). If you are the owner of an online store or a small site, the name of a large company can even give you a plus. But if Yahoo is a competitor for you, it’s worth to think again.
• Using your API and markup language. Untrained developers will take time to figure out how to write widgets.
• Not full localization. The engine interface is translated into Russian, but the site Yahoo! Widgets and most of the widgets in English, which can be difficult for some users.
• Great time to add the widget to the gallery and the lack of a standalone installer. To use one of the main advantages of widgets, ease of installation, you will have to be patient: my widget has been waiting for approval for more than a month.

Findings.

Yahoo! Widgets can be used:

• when creating widgets oriented to western users
• if you are targeting Russian-speaking, but more or less technically savvy users (at least who can read English)
• if you are going to make more than one widget, but several at once. In this case, reducing the cost of development and a single widget management system will show itself particularly well.