Tonight I went widget shopping. After looking at lots of them, I picked out a few of the ones I thought I had potential and installed them on my blog. For those of you who don't click through to my blog, here's some screencaptures of what they look like in flickr, my notes are included.
There are a bunch of different search widgets that allow visitors (or you) to search your blog's content. Thankfully, Christine Herron (a director at Omidyar Network) wrote an exhaustive review of search widgets -- which was really useful.
She also sent me a message via odeo with her thoughts about how widgets help build community. For those who are too busy to listen to this 60 second clip, I transcribed (I type really fast). But it is really worth listening to her say her words.
It makes it very easy for a blogger to add a service into their platform to share thoughts and ideas with the world. It isn't a one-way conversation. You can comment, tag, search, or add audio commentary as this widget Beth has been using. The widgets are designed for greater interaction around the blog's content and the group of folks the blogger has attracted around that content. It's a shared community around a blog and that makes blogs very exciting! Widgets make it easier to enhance the conversation around the content on a blog. They're wonderful for this purpose.
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