Video widgets, the thin applications which display "pushed" videos onto the desktop, blogs and social networks, are getting attention from video producers and site publishers and bloggers.
Last week at CES, ClipBlast’s Gary Baker announced that ClipBlast! will provide an API that is compatible with Google’s OpenSocial standard.
Last month, Gary came to the Beet.TV offices for a demonstration. Above is the first of a two part interview.
So, with all these widget companies coming out, what’s a video producer to do? Meaning, how do we maximize our widget effectiveness? I asked Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write/Web for his thoughts. He sees some specific limitations of Silverlight and YouTube.
"The only compatibility issues I can think of is whether you want to risk losing people by requiring that they download Silverlight and whether you want someday to leverage Flash Light on mobiles, etc. As for being mobile ready I think small filesizes for video are the only thing I can think of for video to be widget ready. I’d also look at what advanced features best suit your needs – the inline tagging of Viddler, the austere aesthetics of Vimeo, the multi-file player of Blip, inline access to embed code that’s offered by many alternatives but not YouTube."
Thanks Marshall.
TechCrunch has a piece today on the success of Meebo widgets.
Blogger Alert: Widgets Can Make You Money, WSJ
For related news you can use, check out today’s Wall Street Journal on how bloggers can make money by using widgets.
— Andy Plesser
