eBay fun with Widgets

There's lots of buzz going on these days about widgets and how they can be useful for online commerce. eBay sellers and buyers in particular can make use of the eBay To Go widget to feature their store, their listings, a particular keyword or even those fun and wacky items for sale that are part of that "only on eBay" experience - maybe you even want to brag online about how you won it on eBay!

If you're not familiar with widgets, make sure to check out this recent BusinessWeek article featuring our own Max Mancini, head of Disruptive Innovation and the Developers Program here at eBay. In addition, Rob Cross also recently attended WidgetCon  in New York City, and had the following recap to share about the conference.

Widgets -- they can make your online shopping experience that more compelling and help reach buyers in new places.

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I was in New York City on Wednesday to attend the WidgetCon Conference, the first conference designed specifically for widget marketers.  My goal for being there was to better understand the widget marketing ecosystem and how eBay can better meet the needs of developers and technology platforms.  I see a huge potential for this segment - the modularized web - and want to make sure eBay is positioned to effectively participate.

Compared to most conferences I've been too lately (including ours), this was a much smaller event, with about 100 people attending and only one agenda.  However there was a lot of great discussion as everyone shared how they participate in the space and the issues they're facing.  The full agenda is here.

One the main themes I heard was that widgets represent a unique opportunity for you to create an effective and lasting dialogue with your users.  This is different from search engine marketing and traditional online marketing.  Users have offered to put your widgets on their page - don't waste that opportunity!  Keep the content fresh, interesting and useful.  For eBay developers, this is actually easier because most of our content is listings and you can always put new information in front of people.

Another key theme was that companies are having challenges effectively measuring and tracking their success in this distributed environment.  When a developer creates a widget for Facebook's network, how do you measure success - viral spreads, click-thrus, user interaction, longevity of the user connection?  There are a lot of unknowns here.  For eBay, we compensate developers for bringing users to our site through the Affiliates Program, but we'll have to continue to investigate the value of a widget.

I continue to believe that eBay is on the right track to help developers take advantage of widget marketing.  Our Shopping Web Services platform is specifically designed for this type of development and our Affiliates Program offers great monetization opportunities.  We still have a lot to do to put all the peices together and expand our offering, but we recognize this and are trying hard to fill the gaps.

On a personal note - one pleasant surprise was that some old friends were also attending.  Ro Choy, now with RockYou!, and Sean Crotty, now with Mpire (an eBay developer), were both there and it was great to catch up.  Best of luck guys!

- Rob