Widgets are mini web applications that you can insert into your website and/or social networks. They’re a popular way to add interesting third party content to your web presence. In this post we look at the top web widgets from Yola and Widgetbox. It’s clear from our analysis that widgets are well past the early adopter stage and are now very mainstream.
Yola, the website building service formerly known as SynthaSite, sent us a list of the top 10 widgets for its 3 million plus community – many of whom are small business owners. We compare that list below with the most popular widgets from more consumer-focusedWidgetbox.
Yola’s top 10 list tells us that Google widgets proliferate (4 of them are in the top 10), media widgets are popular (numbers 1, 4, 8) and communication widgets are well used (2, 5, 7).
- YouTube
- Blog Page Widget
- Google Ad Sense
- Flickr Lightbox
- Meebo Chat Room
- Google Maps
- Skype Me!
- Google Video
- Wufoo Form
- Collect Donation Widget
It’s a little surprising that there’s no mention of Facebook or Twitter widgets, but perhaps in a few more months they will be in Yola’s top 10.
For a more consumer-focused look at the most popular widgets, we checked out Widgetbox’s all-time Most Popular List. Widgetbox provides widgets for social sites – including MySpace, Blogger, Facebook, WordPress, TypePad and iGoogle. Their top 10 shows that gaming, fun and pregnancy tickers (!) are most popular.
- Super Mario Game
- Baby Ticker – The Baby Countdown Pregnancy Ticker
- cyber-pet
- Mario Time Trial
- Maukie – the virtual cat
- Bubbles
- Baby & Pregnancy Countdown Ticker
- MP3 Player
- Swidget 1.0
- Super Mario Bros (with Luigi)
Neither list is especially surprising, but it’s good to see that widgets are being well utilized by mainstream people.
Let us know if you have a favorite web widget and if so, where do you host it?
