The Five Major Attributes of Widgets & Applications

In Learnings from the Widget Roundtable, Jeremiah talked to Ro Choy from RockYou who differentiated clearly between widgets and applications. He defined widgets as limited in functionality, often combined with creating user action outside the widget, e.g. getting them to go to another website. Applications, on the other hand, have full interaction, often with multiple pages and interactivity, and the goal is to get the user engaging with the application rather than going somewhere else. 

They found that because of the range of attributes that are found in widgets and applications, they are impossible to clearly define. Instead, they defined them in terms of how much data interaction they had: 

"Levels of Data Interaction

Highest | Application uses data from your social network | iLike

High | Application uses data from your preferences | Pandora

Low | Application pulls data from source | Audio stream (like a radio station)

None | Static widget, display badge | Widget links to other website"

When we're talking with clients about the types of applications to build, we discuss five major attributes. Most successful applications combine at least 2 of these. 

1. Games (e.g. Scrabulous)

2. Competitions (usually limited in time, with registering or doing things within the widget in order to win a prize)

3. User interaction (an application that allows users to interact with each other in a new way e.g. Funwall, Bob Dylan, Super Poke, and Scrabulous again)

4. Tools (e.g news feeders, football supporter applications, iPlayer, WorldCat (a tool for Academics to find books in libraries))

5. Badges (allowing you to show affiliations or support, e.g. football supporter applications, Causes application, political supporter apps etc).

If we look at the top 15 applications currently listed, based on most active users, we can see how these interact:

1. Photos - tool, user interaction (tags and comments)

2. Fun Wall - user interaction

3. Top Friends - badge, tool (find top friends quickly)

4. Super Wall - user interaction

5. Movies - tool (find good movies), user interaction (share reviews)

6. Bumper Sticker - badge

7. Are YOU Interested? - user interaction, tool (find new friends)

8. Scrabulous - game, user interaction

9. Compare People - user interaction, tool

10. Super Poke - user interaction

11. Texas HoldEm Poker - game, user interaction

12. iLike - badge, tool, plus user interaction and game through music challenge

13. Friends for Sale - game, user interaction

14. Mobile - tool

15. Flirtable - tool, user interaction

One of the primary traits in all of these is user interaction. This is key for virality, and is the key to the success of Facebook generally - if an application allows users to interact in new ways, but you need the application to do that interaction, then it can spread quickly from a small group of initial users. 

Do you agree with my definitions? What would you add/change?