Public widget platforms are blogs and personal websites, generally running on platforms such as WordPress, TypePad, Blogger and others. Each of these platforms has its own particular technical quirks and policies. For example, the current WordPress.com policy is that absolutely no commercial widgets are allowed to be installed on their platform. These public widget platforms tend to be the focus of the "write once run anywhere" business model used by providers such as ClearSpring.
Private widget platforms cover a wider variety of technologies and are used by consumers as elements of their own personal build-it-yourself information/entertainment spaces. Technologies include: personalized start pages such as Netvibes, iGoogle, Live.com and My Yahoo; desktop widgets such as Yahoo Widgets, Mac Dashboard, Vista Sidebar and Google Gadgets; and mobile widget applications such as Yahoo Mobile, Nokia Widsets, Zumobi and iPhone applications.
Public/private social media platforms are used as both a personal information/entertainment space and as a public-facing display platform with deeply embedded viral capabilities. The two most prominent of these are Facebook and MySpace, with others such as LinkedIn focusing on more defined niche audiences. Social media platforms support not only the same style of widget found in pubic and private platforms, but also a broader range of social media applications.
Branded desktop applications (BDAs) are a technology that pre-dates the widget era but partakes of many of the same features as other widget platforms. The chief differentiator is that since BDAs are stand-alone applications, they are much more powerful and can directly access system resources so they can support features like slide-up alerts, complex data management, desktop document delivery and windowless interactive animation.
Managing widget networks and widget meta-applications
The build-once-run-anywhere model is very attractive for media-style campaigns that are looking for a significant viral take-up of naturally attractive content such as movie campaigns. When developing a widget strategy for long-term relationship engagement, the goals and techniques are quite different and require more nuanced widget implementations tailored to the strengths, features and audience of each constituent platform.