Back in my oh so heady youth, when a company would make a presentation about setting up an online store, coding the back end of an online store, or storing product information in a database, the preferred generic, non-industry specific products that were proffered for theoretical sale were widgets, or their interchangeable counterpart, gadgets. Every once in a while a rookie salesperson would combine the two into Gidgets, and was forced to endure a flood of questions on the viability of a store that sold nothing but surf cinema paraphernalia.

Of course, a lot of what we thought we knew about the internet way back when turned out to be wrong. Gadgets and widgets aren't generic placeholders for real products you might sell, they're actual things that you can use to help market your organization. Well, actually they're virtual, not actual things. Virtually actual. Well, those quick little apps for your desktop that you think are really cool for an hour or two and then forget about after that.

The web has gotten in on this now, with Google Gadgets being the latest entry. We've been using Gydgets for ours. (No, Sally Field and Sandra Dee have nothing to do with Gydgets - as far as I know.) In both cases, you are walked through what used to be called a wizard, and you fill in various options to create your widget, gydget, gadget, flibberdygibbit thingamabob. Basic assumptions are made, and with an RSS feed and a YouTube channel of your own, you can create a blob for people to stick on other pages to promote your pages. Only, the results are varied. This is what my Google Gadget ended up looking like:



Those missing images? Ascii code that wasn't translated correctly somewhere along the line. Blech. Was it worth it to figure out where? Nope. And so, my experiment with Google Gadgets came to a close, and I put a note in the back of my head to check back on it again sometime in the future.

Or to simply make a Facebook app via Netvibes. More flexibility, more exposure.

Google Gadgets actually hung in there better than the ones I tried before finding Gydget.com. I won't bother boring you with the names of busted widget companies, and just say that the lack of flexibility on these nascent tools leaves a lot to be desired at this point. Focus on your content, and if one of these gidget-gadget-widget-thingamabob makers comes up with something useful, use it. And if, like Gydget, there's an interface to track where your flibberdygibbet is being used, you too might be dissapointed to find that there aren't that many people out there interested in promoting your stuff over theirs:



Depressingly enough, the 9 spots where the Untangled Gydget is located? Yeah, they're all me. More depressing? That makes this our most popular Gydget. The nice thing is that they're built and don't require any maintenance, so if they start taking off later, yippee! We could start a campaign in ou newsletter to promote them, and maybe then we'd see some traction, but that's not really what Social Edge is geared towards. If you're trying to get your visibility up through a word of mouth campaign via your most passionate advocates, this might be worth doing. Otherwise, your time and energy is probably better spent applying for a Google Adwords grant.

Way back when, examples of how to use an application invariably had demos featuring a company that made and sold widgets. Nobody actually sold widgets, but they were fun to fake.

Now there are lots of different widgets, be they Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets, Windows Gadgets, Yahoo! Widgets, Google Gadgets, Facebook Apps... ah, the list goes on and on. Widgetbox has Blidgets and other widgets, and there are Gydgets too.

Even Social Edge has widgets - or shall we call them wEdgets®? - that you can put on your blog, your MySpace or Facebook page - you can do all kinds of things with them! You can let all of your Facebook friends know about your favorite Social Edge Blogger:

We're experimenting right now to see if this is something that people will use or not. We think that there a useful way of letting people share our information out to like minded folks. We'll see what happens. We've also started a Facebook group, so we'll see how that goes as well. If you don't have time to experiment, it's probably not that big a deal for you to wait and see how some of this shakes out. If you are with a new organization, this might be an ideal way to get the word out about who you are and what you do.

I'm old.

This is what it must have felt like for my father when I told him that Duran Duran was like an 80's version of the Beatles. He must have spontaneously sprouted grey hair right then and there.

I'm on Facebook, and I don't know what the heck I'm doing there. A friend of mine asked me to be her Facebook friend, and how could I tell her no? I hadn't realized that we weren't friends already. Now, I have validation that we are buds. But I haven't embraced it yet. Somebody else asked me to be their friend and alas, after a couple of tries accepting his invitation, I was frustrated enough that I went back to programming. So now I feel bad, because he doesn't know that he's my friend. I've dissed him by not being able to figure out how to accept his invitation.

Oh, the humanity. Or lack thereof.

Then I read a Newsweek article on Facebook-ing Philanthropy. Okay, now some established dead-tree media is talking about the possibilities for philanthropic causes to leverage social networks. I have to figure this out now, before somebody realizes that I'm old. My read is that although no money is coming in, awareness is being raised. Now organizations need to figure out how to capitalize on those eyeballs in a quantifiable way.

The Daily Bruin also ran a recent article on Facebook and Philanthropy, which included the following quote:


Great. The real world is messed up but what is so great about this online world is that it is just like the real thing. Only with virtual kegs of beer. (And yes,  I rewrote the  previous sentence to be more grammatically correct. I can feel the grey hairs sprouting with each passing moment.)

I was just about to start following the breadcrumb trail back out of Facebook and into the real virtual world when I read this:


Oddly enough, this made me feel better and I decided to take a bit of a look around, see what I could find in this den of virtual iniquity. In order to be a responsible Facebook Citizen, I found the Causes application and added it to my profile. Then I went and searched for causes to support. Now, when my handful of friends come and visit my profile, they can see that I support the Alliance for Climate Protection, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation, and one of 11 different options for Kiva. I picked the one with the most members and the most money donated.

For some reason, I skipped joining Sam's Stop the Lies of Global Warming cause. He seems to have everything he needs already, other than a dictionary and a copy of The Elements of Style, perhaps. And yes, how old am I? I just edited out a frontal lobe joke, because it is unseemly to me to bash a high school kid for being young and ill-informed. *sigh* I swear, I'm going to go straight from Facebook to a retirement home. Besides, Sam's obviously figured out how to add friends, and I'm still trying to figure out how to log in properly so that I can add all my friends to the same profile.

Also not making my causes cut was a Stop Vegetarians cause. I didn't realize that I was abnormal and part of the problem. I guess if I really cared about making the world a better place, I'd be choking down a hamburger for lunch. Instead, I have my mind set on a nice green salad with sprouts.

So yes, Facebook did originate as a social network for college students, and in many ways has stayed true to its roots. It is as much about sex, drugs and music as one would expect, with some social causes on the side. Just like Berkeley in the 60's. Only instead of waking up and wondering where you are, you wake up and wonder if you would have more friends if you had more bandwidth.

Valleywag is running a poll asking who the hottest startup in the Silicon Valley is. There are some familiar logos featured, including Facebook, Art.com, Ning, Linked In, Second Life and Tesla Motors. There are a lot more from companies I've heard of but haven't really looked into like Joost and Bebo and still more that I've never heard of. I wouldn't say that I'm a web poll addict, but when I see one like this I'm more likely than not to pick a radio button and submit. I'm all for green energy, so I was about to throw my support behind Tesla when I noticed another logo amongst the others: Kiva.

Yes, nestled amongst the potential IPO's and Google/Yahoo! services to be is Kiva, the little microfinance company that could.

Maybe Web 2.0 really is different if a social entrepreneurship is considered amongst Silicon Valley's hot start-ups. Maybe people are looking for a diferent kind of ROI these days?