Newspapers are going 'widget'-happy

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For newspapers, breaking pieces of their content and coming up with playful applications like online quizzes could be even more monumental than their first forays onto the Web a decade or so ago.

The New York Times is still in the early days of widget development, with just a handful launched so far, but many more are in the works.

"Some of the most fun meetings we have are when we're sitting around and brainstorming what kinds of widgets we can create," says Vivian Schiller, the general manager of NYTimes.com.

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As for getting a traditional media outlet to embrace the newest Web boom, Schiller said that "whatever cultural or institutional barriers to this are long gone."

Schiller and others say widgets are no flash in the pan, since they harness the biggest change currently going in online behavior. "It's both reflecting and accelerating the personalization of the Web," Schiller says.

As for making money, well, that's still a matter of some discussion. The Wall Street Journal says it's building traffic to its main site by allowing users to embed WSJ.com video elsewhere, but the paper hasn't yet signed up advertisers for its first widget.

That markets-based application is more of a "marketing and brand extension," says Mike Jones, director of business and audience development for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. "The revenue model is still TBD" — to be determined.

In the long haul, many see great opportunities for media companies to offer unbundled versions of some of their content as another way to get in front of audiences.

"If you have content that is good and allow people to distribute it themselves, you're in a much more Darwinian environment ... in that there is less friction to distribute the best content," says David Weiden, a partner at Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm with investments in widget makers including Slide and iLike.

"You don't have to do a deal with Yahoo, Weiden says. "You just encapsulate the content and attach a thing like a Lego block to it so it will attach to anything that takes Lego blocks. It's a big opportunity for content owners."

And although the advertising model remains undefined, many marketers find the idea intriguing.

"It's a natural link between information and entertainment, which is a sweet spot for newspapers," says David Verklin, chief executive of Carat Americas, a major ad-buying firm. "It's a wonderful delivery strategy for the newspapers to deliver the information they're gathering anyway."

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