Our Wild, Wacky, Wonderful Widget Economy
Forget Web 2.0, Web 4.0, whatever…We’ve entered the era of the Widget Economy – and that’s a whole lot more than fun little chunks of code:
Tech Widgets: You’ve got a ever-growing list choices of “plug ‘n play” cool tools for communications, collaboration and production. You no longer have to be a super techie to implement a screamin’ blazin’ integrated computer system, build a good web site, set up ecommerce or produce professional quality e-letters.
Operation Widgets: You can start a viable, successful national – even international – business with a phone, notebook computer, web site and a healthy dose of chutzpah.
People Widgets: You can collaborate with people as needed for specific projects, products or customers. No formal company needed. No physical office required. Designer in Utah? Customers in Europe? Production in New Mexico? CEO in LA? No prob. (Read More: Bruce Fryer on Virtual Marketing Teams)
And that’s just the beginning! As more people become more Web savvy, even “non-geeks” will easily build technology infrastructures, encompassing whatever Web components they choose…and form profitable relationships (those people “widgets”) on the fly. They won’t have to learn complicated software or actually fly all over the place. (Personally, I call this my bathrobe business model.)
It’s a Wild, Wild Widgety World: We pick what works best for us, put it together and get going. And, we can change as we go.
Sure, there are a ton of kinks still and we’re in the toddler stage. But think of how simple it is to instantly send a huge document anywhere anytime. Now, remember how you did it in – oh, say – 1981…or even 1991? Hmmm….I can remember when you taped the document together so you could put in on the roll in the fax machine, then made the call, waited for the screech, and placed the receiver in the socket thingies. Then, you hoped against hope the paper didn’t jam…I’m always surprised when someone (rarely) wants to fax me something. Hey, just email/upload it!
Now…I gotta go send a file to a printer in Atlanta…Happy Monday!
Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, economy, widgets, business development, widget economy
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The version of Safari that comes with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) has a feature that lets you grab a piece of a web page and turn it into a Dashboard Widget. I haven’t played with it yet so I don’t know how well it works, but it’s a neat concept.
“Personally, I call this my bathrobe business model.”
Hmmm. Too much personally revealing information there Mary?
@John. I understand from our developers at work, that Adobe is working on something very similar to that with the next … variant (vs version) of Flash.
Grab a chunk of anything and make it part of your desktop. Sounds interesting in a geewhizz way.
Cheers!
- Steve
Hey! It’s a nice bathrobe! Or, there’s the shorts and flip-flops biz model…but that only works well in warm weather.
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