The New Fangled Widgets

For anyone "of a certain age" (generally seen these days as over 30), you may think of "widget" as a generic term for something concrete that is manufactured. Business scenarios often describe the mythical manufacturing plant somewhere that makes "widgets."

Well, it's time to rejoice, because now you, too, can make widgets with little or no manufacturing experience. Today's Washington Post ran an article on the front page of the Business section on just this topic "Wave of Widgets Spreads on the Web," noting that (and I swear I didn't pay these guys to say this) "Advertisers are no longer wanting people to click on a link to buy something," said Haroon Mokhtarzada, Freewebs' 27-year-old founder and chief executive. "Now they're wanting people to engage in a neat product while they build brand equity."

OK, so I did highlight the word "engage." Clearly, widgets are the latest example of a clever approach to engaging consumers in the process of creating (and selling) products. Oh, and if you hear the term "blidget", that's a widget based on a blog. Pretty clever, huh?

If you want to play around with widgets, check out some of the sites where you can create your own, such as widgetbox. I'll be testing some out on the engagism site (in the middle of a revamp, by the way), so stop by!