Here are two excerpts from a hot off the press news bulletin in the Atlanta Business Chronicle:
Intel Corp. and Yahoo Inc. on Wednesday announced plans for the Widget Channel, a television application framework optimized for TV and related consumer electronics devices.
and furthermore…
Yahoo-branded TV widgets “will enable consumers to engage in a variety of experiences such as watching videos, tracking their favorite stocks or sports teams, interacting with friends, or staying current on news and information,” the companies said.
Just a few months ago, Widgets.com was listed for sale by Rick Schwartz on Ebay. If Yahoo employed forward thinking like Rick Schwartz, they would own the perfect domain right now. Well, I guess if Yahoo really thought like that, they would be owned by Microsoft now, but that’s another story.
Now, with dropping PPC payouts, Rick has begun to develop Widgets.com. While Widgets.com certainly wouldn’t have come cheap months ago, the value of this great generic domain name continues to climb.
I wish Rick S. would let Rick L. make a website for him. One of the most spammy looking pages I’ve ever run into — I almost miss the pop-unders… but when you’ve got the traffic, YOU make the rules.
I understand wanting to get into the widget space, but for “television”? Talk about backward thinking, something is very wrong here.
While everyone is being busy killing off TV and bringing it online, these two are working to bring the net to the dying platform. Brilliant. No wonder YHOO and INTL are where they are lately.
T V isn’t dead yet. As more homes become smart homes and the “60 inch super high def LCD” hooked to your computer IS your tv, things like widgets could be a smart move.
Jason,
Your comment about Rick’s widgets.com “but when you’ve got the traffic, YOU make the rules” is true in theory but its not helping the industry and those rules affect everyone.
It would be nice to see Rick develop anything that doesn’t look spammy. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not cutting down Rick’s ability to sell names and promote the industry – but the credibility factor is always lost when traditional institutions look up sites like this. And we need these people to understand, support and join in much bugger numbers than today – (such as banks and venture capitalist)
You can sell an industry all you want but when designs look like spam – guess what, they are spam – to outsiders.
Widgets.com is just a horrible website. For $100 anybody could design a better landing page and that $100 would pay off in spades down the road.
Alan