Late last week MySpace responded to notices from the RIAA by banning all ProjectPlaylist widgets from its site. Yesterday Facebook followed suit.

"The RIAA initially contacted Facebook last summer requesting the removal of the Project Playlist application for copyright violation, and recently reopened those communications. We have forwarded the RIAA’s letters to Project Playlist so it can work directly with that organization and music labels on a resolution. In the meantime, the application must be removed to comply with the Facebook Platform Terms of Service…

For one, sorting through “followers” and considering reciprocal “friend adding” is easier because you can filter through the list of friends in a pretty speedy fashion (especially if you have a hundred or more pending followers).

A number of weeks ago, MyBlogLog community manager Miss Tilly mentioned the introducing of a Connector widget.

It looks like an aggregator for your social networking services.

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The Wishlist widget allows users to publish what gifts (right now, just music) they want on their social networking profile or blog, and friends can purchase it for them and send it digitally. The recipient receives an email telling them so-and-so bought them a gift.

gBox CEO Tammy Artim tells WebProNews that over a million tracks are available in gBox’s inventory, in MP3 or WMA formats from major music labels such as Universal and Sony, or from independent labels like Iota.

Though the initial release is for music only, Artim says the gBox platform will extend to videos and games, and eventually into hard goods. Mobile capabilities are also planned as the company works out details with the major carriers.

The company also contrasts its more controlled approach to promotion to Facebook’s Beacon fiasco. Instead of defacto endorsements like Beacon provides, users can more actively choose which products or artists they find desirable, and post them to their Wishlist.

"We think it’s a pretty cool way to get in front of the consumer," says Artim, also noting how it’s a follow-up to the popular practice of virtual gifting.

gBox’s Wishlist is only available for PC, but Artim says Mac compatibility will follow.

The increasing use of widgets is related to the popularity of social networking sites. Social networks have introduced a new group of users to the concept of dressing up their Web pages with small, useful programs.  The adoption of widgets has grown rapidly in 2007 with 39 percent of users saying they are familiar with widgets and 29 percent have used them.

"Social networking sites have greatly contributed to the viral spread of widgets," said Barry Parr, JupiterResearch Media Analyst and lead author of the report. "Facebook increased the viral ante by giving widget authors programming access to its user database and notifying users when a friend added a new widget."

The most popular widgets are those that allow users to play video, music, or view slide shows. Widgets offering news, weather, or other information are also popular and often distributed through social networking sites.

"Media companies, including news organizations, should experiment with widgets to cement their relationship with audiences," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch.

"The evolution of widgets is in an early stage, though, so companies should keep development costs low and anticipate experimentation and frequent changes in what widgets look like and how they’re delivered."

The reason simply being that new stuff attracts people which makes it a better place to launch new stuff.  (Think restaurants).  It wasn’t obvious that this move would work but 6,000 widgets later and following one of the most astute deals ever done on this or any other planet, we can safely say…good job. 

However, even more tellingly, is the speed at which the other grand fromages have jumped on the bandwagon.  First, Murdoch’s Myspace followed suit, then the open platform became a major strand of Jerry Yang’s uber-strategy for Yahoo, then Microsoft stumped up everything-for-nothing just to get a foothold, and now Google lines up an alliance to try and out-Facebook  Facebook – in the shape of OpenSocial. 

In a very Google-like way, this new standard is huge, ambitious and spread out all over the web.  In a very un-Google like way, they are playing catch-up.  For marketing folk it means that the world of widgets, which can be used to create little (or big) branding tools, just got a whole lot bigger.

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Through the new Launchpad, um, launch, Pulliam said they have made it much easier for the typical Internet user to grab content and make it ready for placement on a destination. People visit the Launchpad site, get one piece of code, and enclose the content they want to distribute with that code.

Embedding can be performed with all the usual destinations that are popular today: MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle, Pageflakes, etc.

As an added benefit, Launchpad widgets generate real-time analytics. These show the various details associated with a widget’s placement, views, and user interactions.

That information may be accessed through the dashboard console Clearspring provides. The data may be exported to Excel, or drawn out via APIs for further assessment.

Clearspring also makes a sharing menu available, which can be skinned with one line of CSS. This allows the site publisher to make a list of sites where the widget can be shared immediately available to visitors.

If someone with an account on Blogger stops by, and wants the widget, all the person has to do is to click the Blogger button on the menu and grab the embed code. Alternately, the visitor can post that widget to the blog, email it to a friend, or bookmark it on sites like Delicious or Reddit.

Clearspring has some prominent users of its premium syndication service today. The Today Show and the NBA list among its widgety members. Launchpad leverages the technology to the broader Internet in an easy to implement and track format, which should make it worth a try for bloggers and site publishers.

New distribution partners include aNobii, Blinkx, blip.tv, Book Divas, Buy.com, FORA.tv, Goodreads, Lib.rario.us, LibraryThing, Revish, Veoh, Vuze and WhatsOnMyBookshelf.

Currently TurnHere’s distribution network consists of major Web portals including AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo and YouTube. With its new video and publishing partners, TurnHere hopes to bring a global audience of book fans broader access to BookVideos.tv.

"TurnHere’s author videos are compelling content, and we think they are an excellent addition to our author profiles," said Otis Chandler, founder and CEO, Goodreads.

"We’re finding that seeing and hearing a favorite author in an on-page video is a very evocative experience, and we’re very excited to be working with TurnHere to provide it to our members."

In addition to its new distribution partners, TurnHere has launched a new customizable widget and enhanced video player for book publishers. The new video player was built using ActionScript 3.0 programming language, added commenting options, improved author bios and book descriptions, book jacket art, related video links, embed codes and link sharing functionality through RSS feeds and email.

"TurnHere’s network of distribution partners is growing at an incredible rate and we are continuing to look at strategic business initiatives that add value to book publishers through BookVideos.tv," said Bradley J. Inman, CEO and founder, TurnHere.

"As we continue to forge new relationships with a diverse range of Web partners, we are reaching a very engaged online audience never before tapped into by the publishing market."

The RSS-based service offers statistics on online usage behavior for the U.S., UK and Asia Pacific markets. The release is the first of a series of widgets focused on making it easier for marketers, academics, the press and digital fans to have access into online consumer usage.

The Hitwise To Go Widget can be found on the Yahoo Widget platform, which operates on both Mac, and PC platforms. The widget will soon be offered on Google Gadget and Yourminis platforms. The Hitwise To Go widget allows users to view up to date online trends.

“Releasing our data via desktop widgets makes it easy for digital enthusiasts to stay informed about key online trends as they happen. They also serve as a gateway to access a full archive of online statistics and other publicly available Hitwise data sources such as the Hitwise Analyst Blogs and our Data Center,” said Tessa Court, chief marketing officer for Hitwise.

Hitwise To Go data covers a variety of industry topics such as the growth of newly launched Web sites, recent search trends, the impact of Web 2.0 technologies on specific industries, and popular Web sites among specific demographics and social group segments. The data is based on 25 million Internet users (10 million in the U.S.), who search and interact with 1 million Web sites a day.

If you use the iGoogle homepage you can add the tool to your homepage by selecting add by URL and then submitting this URL:

http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/keywords.xml

Creating tools for Google’s platform allows Google to suck down even more of my time and attention. Many others are also hooked on iGoogle and the Google feed reader, to the point where they scream and/or unsubscribe if a channel only uses partial feeds. If Google doesn’t lose the farm on copyright, the only way someone is going to beat them is if they come up with a way to make it faster and easier for us to consume information and feed our egos. It is going to be hard to create something sustainable and scaled that does that, largely because scale undermines most communities, and no company will be able to collect as much data as Google does right now without running into legal issues.

I am off to fly in a few hours and haven’t packed yet. If you are going to the Domain Roundtable I hope to see you there soon.

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