Widgets: Advertising Will Never Be The Same

So says this article that ran originally in Billboard.

Widgets are those handy little apps you can place on a PC (or Mac) desktop that transmits information to you from a website, such as news headlines, weather forecasts, sports scores, etc., without you having to endure the pain and agony of opening a web browser and visit the website itself. The Vista operating system has embraced the widget concept (calling them "gadgets").

Remember the old application PointCast? It was essentially the same thing in that it used what was called "push technology", i.e., it pushed information to you through this application, without your having to manually request it. Same deal here, essentially, except each widget is standalone, with its unique stream of streamlined information, as opposed to the omnibus that PointCast was intended to be.

So who benefits from widgets, from a marketing point of view? Seems to me that those who can deliver information in a branded environment would obviously benefit (Weather.com, CNN.com, etc.), although their ability to directly monetize it might be hampered in this format. After all, a widget is almost by definition of very small app, as opposed to large desktop apps like Weatherbug, so the ability to carry advertising on a widget might be difficult.

Perhaps widget content providers would like people to click headlines and come to the site for more information, but isn't the point of the widget that you receive the information in the widget without having to come to the site? Seems to defeat the purpose, n'est-ce pas? Used in that way, the widget is not more than an RSS conduit.

From my standpoint, of course, I am most interested in how direct marketers can use the widget for customer acquisition purposes. I'm a bit doubtful that you can successfully engage widget users to sign up through a complex registration form on the widget itself, and using it to drive traffic might be a testable proposition, but I wouldn't bet on its success as a high volume generation marketing vehicle. I'll keep my eye on it, though, in case an acquisition usage tactic becomes clear to me.

Answer: Enough Data To Make Your Freaking Brain Explode!

Question: How much data storage exists on the planet?

According to this article in eMarketer, a study by IDC reveals that there are 246 exabytes of total storage on the planet.

An exabyte equals 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes, and there are 246 of those, which I'm sure is really meaningful to you. So how about this: if the average iPod is 40 gigs, then from that much storage you could create over 6.6 billion iPods, more than one for every person on the planet. Yeah, I know, you probably got three of them -- that'll cover for the guy in Vanuatu and the teenager on the Faroe Islands that don't have one.

And because I knew you were gonna ask -- an exabyte is 1,000 petabytes, a petabyte a 1,000 terabytes, and a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes -- so that means an exabyte equals a jillion zillion gigabytes.

But that's not the best part. The best part is that the story goes on to say that more data is going to be generated just this year -- 255 exabytes -- than there even is storage available. If that doesn't make your head explode thinking about it, then you have a hell of a head.

So the next time your no account CTO tells you "storage is expensive" as an excuse to not keep log files for your site -- yes, that's what one actually told me less than a year ago, in front of the CEO -- that's when you know it's time to quit.