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Weaknesses
The most obvious weakness of RSS to most entertainment marketers is that an RSS reader tends not to be a terribly attractive or aesthetically pleasing platform on which to build a brand image. It's unlikely that you have any control over the look and feel of the user’s reader. In many environments, the readers themselves are deliberately designed to be “background.” The customizing functions of a My Yahoo! page are an excellent example of this.
If your property has a broad target audience, you may find that RSS cannot realistically reach a true cross-section of your consumers.
Finally, the role that RSS can play in social media is quite finite. Users can certainly add RSS feeds to their social media presences – be they profile pages, blogs, vlogs, etc. They are, however, one way communications tools. They deliver content to the user, but don’t facilitate engagement with other users or brands.
Strengths
The category of widgets is so broad that there are likely several suppliers that can provide you with units that will meet basic brand information dissemination goals. Companies like Slide, Clearspring, RockYou, and SpringWidgets have all grown rapidly and together offer a range of widget options for your consideration as marketing vehicles. If you're looking for an executionally novel or peculiar application, widgets are probably a good bet. Many widgets are developed on a truly custom basis, with multi-week or multi-month development schedules during which you can help define executional features that you want. You need to pay close attention to ensure a high quality presentation, though.
If you're looking to get onto iGoogle, Netvibes or Windows Live, widgets are certainly a productive route. Millions of users are already comfortable with the idea of grabbing and placing widgets on their personal pages, so the learning curve for these consumers is fairly modest. Since these industry leaders are basing their consumer interface on widgets, social networks are also riding the trend, incorporating widgets or, like Facebook and Bebo, widget-applications.
A good widget developer will create a unit that is capable of being placed in a variety of social network environments, not just one. In today's Web environment, there is no need to create individual units for individual networks. Common standards are available to make your widgets more versatile.
Many widgets are built on RSS feeds. Essentially, they are customized RSS readers. Since RSS is a proven technology, you can be assured that your consumers will receive a solid brand experience.
If you're looking to advertise, some popular widgets feature graphical text or video advertisement placements that you can buy. Certain widget builders have created their own ad networks of the most popular widgets so that you can buy advertising across a number of units. This makes the process of buying widget advertising far more convenient. However, you may find that your ad message is very much secondary to the primary message and function of the widget.
Weaknesses
While widgets have a number of strengths that have led to their rapid growth in the marketplace, there are also a few caveats that you should be cognizant of. You need to be aware that there are already thousands of widgets available to consumers. This should matter to you because any marketplace with 5,000 competitors is a challenging environment in which to drive awareness, trial, and stickiness. Not only are you competing with other entertainment widgets, you're also competing with widgets specifically designed by some of the largest Web publishing properties. Their goals mirror yours: building exposure, awareness, trial, and loyalty. This is not to say that it's impossible to create a widget that gets noticed, but rather that the marketplace does not operate like The Field of Dreams.
Another important consideration is social media. Many entertainment companies develop widgets as a way of gaining a presence in social networks. In our view, however, the brand needs to think about the larger context of all social media, not just Facebook and MySpace. There are strategic and practical reasons for this. Let's start with the practical. If you go to the webpage of a heavy user of Facebook, you may find that that person has stacked 4, 8, 12, even 20 different widgets on their homepage.
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