Everything You Wanted to Know About Widget Marketing

Businessweek devotes this month’s CEO Guide to Technology to widgets and it’s an interesting package (full disclosure: I was interviewed for one of the articles). In one article describing why widgets are a fad, there’s this great quote from Ben Kunz in his opinion column:

The entire mindset of a person engaged on MySpace or LinkedIn is different from that of a hunter on a search engine. A Google user is walking into a store. A Facebook user is walking into a bar.

Later, he describes a conversation he had with an ad network exec, who said his clients’ widget clickthrough rates were down, so they were running ads promoting the widgets.

“If you need to run ads to get people to your ads, maybe you have a problem,” Kunz writes. Probably not a problem if you’re an ad network exec, though.

Another neat feature: A series of profiles of Facebook apps from major marketers that flopped. I can add one more: the Hellman’s Holiday Kitchen app (no longer available, seeing as it’s now March). One of the cardinal rules of social network marketing is that the brand has to be something people feel passionate about. I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel passionate about mayonnaise. And moreover, even if I were, would I want to let all my friends know about it?