feedcommerce for publishers

Web publishers are predominately concerned with generating revenue by increasing traffic to and enabling internet commerce through their web properties. Feed commerce enables embedding of retailer product information using established web standards to publish and syndicate product data in an accessible and reusable format.

Widgets

The primary visualization for feedcommerce product information has come to be known as a "widget".  According to Wikipedia, a web widget is:

A portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation

Wikipedia

Widgets are in effect the touch points for consumers, allowing a personalised shopping experience. Widgets (also referred to as gadgets, modules or applets) are often written in Flash or JavaScript to enable rich user interface and interaction.

Widgets have become more and more important on the internet because they are so easy to use and they enable discrete packets of data to be published directly to the consumers preferred location. The mobility of widgets is primarily a result of the recent proliferation of widget engines support in both operating systems and web sites. As a result several platforms for widgets now exist.

Widgets on the desktop

Vista, OS X and Yahoo! provide direct support for displaying widgets on the users desktop. After consumers download and install the desktop widget, they get notified when you have new products available.

Widgets on blogs and other websites

Many CRM and blog platforms like Wordpress andTypePad, provide direct support for adding widgets to web sites to advertise products to the site users.

Widgets on social networks

Increasingly the places where consumers spend much of their online time each day is social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. And these services allow users to choose and add widgets to their corner of the social graph.

Widgets on start pages

Personalised start pages such as iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes and Windows Live allow publishers to display widgets, such as those from retailers like Kelkoo and Zixxo.

Widgets on mobile devices

The Widsets widget platform enables development of widgets for a variety of mobile devices from most major handset manufacturers - Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola, Samsung and RIM. And of course the iPhone also has some support for hosting widgets.

Widgets on Instant Messaging devices

In May 2005 Microsoft acquired a company called MessageCast, a provider of automated alerting and messaging technology that at the time supported the MSN Alerts service. Currently MessageCast is powering Windows Live Alerts, which lets users receive RSS feeds via IM. This is particularly appealing where users need to be alerted of updates or news on an near instant basis.

Social networks + widgets

Social networks deserve a special mention in the context of widgets. MySpace is often credited with being a primary factor in the success of YouTube by hosting millions of YouTube video widgets directly within MySpace user pages. Since the release of the Facebook Platform API (the interface that allows 3rd party companies to add applications to Facebook user pages) in May 2007 Facebook has experienced phenomenal user base growth that has made it a compelling retailing platform in of itself. Already many companies are making their products and services visible to Facebook users, opening up a whole new consumer market.