Q&A with WaPo and USA Today: what’s with the widget craze?

 
Some background:

What’s a widget? "A widget is a simplified app," says Maurice Boissiere, vice president of client services of the widget development firm Clearspring Technologies. "They can have dynamic functionality, like the ability to make content fresh and relevant, but not the two-way communication of a deep application that's fully integrated into a social graph like Facebook.”

In plain words, newspaper widgets are live windows that a user can choose to implement onto his or her own website, desktop or social networking profile. Figuratively, they’re windows into a selected portion of an external site’s content. Most newspaper widgets offer live feeds to thematically-grouped headlines, but they can also be used to simply play a game and get some brand name exposure. Unlike RSS feeds, widget use can be easily tracked and measured, and the apps can be advertised.

Have a look at the related articles at the bottom to learn more about other issues concerning widgets and newspapers.

What widgets do you currently offer and why those?

Sucherman: We launched three widgets so far. We started with travel widgets because this is definitely an area of growth (of interest to advertisers), and USA Today is known as a newspaper for travelers, whether business or leisure. The Travel Deals and Destinations widget displays travel deals for consumers. The Today in the Sky widget links back to the very popular Today in the Sky blog, which is frequently updated with news about air travel. The Top Travel Stories widget displays travel news from USA Today in a less ‘featury’ way.

Washingtonpost.com launched its first widgets about two months ago. A couple of the Post’s widgets revolve around politics, with a widget displaying news about the Iraq Strategy, another one linking back to political blog The Fix, as well as White House Watch, which offers Dan Froomkin’s insight. The Post also developed lighter widgets, such as the D.C. Sports and Celebritology ones.

Are you working on any other widgets?

Sucherman: Within the next few days, a new Elections 2008 widget will be launched, which will carry USA Today’s news about politics, as well as links from the popular On Politics blog. We’re also working on a widget to link back to the Pop Candy blog, a video widget, as well as a Snapshot widget (the Snapshot is one of USA Today’s trademark features, both in print and online, which gives a daily quickfact and question. Today: US consumers spent $38.5 billion on their pets last year). We’ll also launch a widget for our ‘candidate match game.’

Brady: We’ll be releasing several widgets relating to the presidential campaign. Candidate widgets will be more informational, and provide links to articles, policies and data about particular candidates. And there will be a fun widget, a scrambler game, where users will have to recompose a candidate’s picture. We’re also working on a classifieds widget, which can display ads according to job and location criteria.

Why are newspapers delving into ‘widget campaigns’? How do widgets fit in newspaper’s strategy?

Sucherman: On one hand, our readers have a great affinity for the brand name. There’s something powerful about being able to take that where you want to. On the other hand, we increasingly need to reach readers outside of our own walls. In other words, we must put content where there are people and we need to be where the eyeballs are. Widgets also have a visual component, which works into USA Today’s traditional image (as opposed to podcasts for example). They have the power of RSS feeds, but are more visual and more transportable.

Brady: Widgets are about disaggregating content on the website. We’re trying to adapt to the ways people use the Web, by getting our content on sites that might drive readers to us. It’s just acknowledging that we have to put a lot of fishing hooks out there to drive readers, because more and more people are trying to create their own experience on the Web. If a newspaper tries to catch all of its readers by merely developing its homepage, chances are it’s going to be a lonely experience.

Does the emergence of widgets change anything in newsroom organization or journalists’ jobs?

Sucherman: Not really. They are a low-cost feature that can be implemented by technical staff.

Brady: Over time, as widgets evolve, they might affect issues of storytelling. But right now, it’s mostly a job for the interactive team.

What kind of user data can newspapers get from widgets?

Sucherman: We can track where our widgets are used and incoming traffic, although it might be difficult to keep track of all the websites that use our widgets. It’s a little bit of the Wild West out there.

Brady: We get the data from the websites that use our widgets. We’ll know which ones use them, as well as basic traffic measurements. We’re working with specialized companies like Clearspring, which can give us all the needed metrics for our widgets.

Further note: At a recent session about widgets, executives from two widget-proactive firms, RockYou and Slide.com, gave some insight into widget use. Although both registered a huge number of page views through widgets, they pointed out the difference between the number of page views, representing passive viewers, and the number of users who actually clicked through the widget, engaged users. The ratio was five to one. So it might be some time before newspapers precisely figure out how to pictch their traffic stats.

How can widgets be monetized at this point? Or is brand name exposure the main reason to  develop widgets so far?

Sucherman: We do have an advertising strategy and we’re working with Newsgator to develop a model. But revenue is not a primary drive. The first goal is to get more eyeballs and our brand name around. We’ll be tracking how people use widgets. You don’t want to jump to any conclusions off the bat. I don’t think we have any hard number goals for widgets.

Brady: We sell sponsorships to advertisers, who can either buy into one widget or the whole package. Advertisers can be interested either because they can target a specific area of content interest, or simply because they like buying into ‘what’s new and what’s cool.’ The first step with these new technologies is to simply get your foot through the door, rather than trying to make money. Considering widgets have low overhead, any revenue they generate is good in itself.

In Conclusion

Here’s a quick outline of some of the main points about newspaper widgets that both Sucherman and Brady touched upon:
- Widgets are a tool for newspapers to adapt to new trends in news consumption, by enabling them to place content outside of their website, tailored towards a user’s particular preference.
- They can easily be created at a low cost.
- They can be monetized and there are already specialized companies working in this business.
- Right now though, widgets are mostly about getting a brand name across a multiplicity of platforms, and gathering user data.

Related articles

USA Today and Washington Post launch widgets
Are widgets the new website?
Don’t turn widgets into spyware
Are widgets the next big thing?
Adgets offer interactive ads for newspapers
News widgets: a creative use of online media
News companies launch widgets

Source: Joel Sucherman, Executive Producer, USA Today - Jim Brady, Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com