Which “widget” are we talking about?

There are two basic types of widgets in our world today.

First, there’s the old-school, industrial age definition: a widget is used as a placeholder name for any unspecified device or good, particularly as used by economists for an abstract commodity.

Our sponsorship sales guys think of widgets this way. They often say “the football team is our ‘widget’.” They are basically saying the team is our product, it’s what we’re selling.

But a newer definition of widget has emerged: A component of a graphical user interface that the user interacts with

This type of widget is often used as the “front end” for syndicated content. It’s typically presented as a pleasant looking little box that sits on your computer screen and offers you updated information from some publisher.

This “widget” is anything but a commodity.

This second type of widget is all the rage these days, and couldn’t be any more different that the first. I have a widget on my desktop that automatically shows me local weather forecast (or is that gadget, I can’t remember). Southwest Airlines has a cool widgetthat sits on customers’ desktops and announces special airfare deals. This little gem has produced over $130 million in sales since it was first launched in February of this year.

Companies and causes alike are using widgets to get their content out into the world, make money and maintain relationships with customers.

Here are a couple examples from the Yahoo Widget Gallery:

With widget taking on this new meaning, and it’s important to know what we’re saying.

The words we use can reveal a lot about the way we think. In this example, our own salesmen are describing our football team using a word that means “commodity.” I don’t believe that our guys think of the football team as a commodity, but when they use that word, it can have a commoditizing effect in the prospect’s mind. This effect may be unconcious, but it’s there.

The Bible says: “We can make a large horse turn around and go wherever we want by means of a small bit ni its mouth. And a tiny rudder makes a hugeship turn wherever the pilot wants to go, even though the winds are strong. So also, the tonge is a small thing, but what enourmous damage it can do (James 3:3-4). This verse is completely out of context, but it alludes to the power of the words we speak, so I just felt like throwing it in here!

What we say and what people hear can be two different things. Especially when the prospect understands (even if the salesman doesn’t) that there are, in fact, two definitions of “widget”, one that’s passe and one that’s cutting edge, and we’re talking about the wrong one.

If you’re like me, then you might be thinking, “come on, Pat, these are just words you’re talking about. They really don’t matter.”

That’s what I thought back in college when the female students on campus made a big deal over whether you called them “girls” or “women”. Seemed silly to me at first, but after I thought about it, I could see their point. The words we choose to use can be loaded with meaning, and even if the the speaker is not always cognizant of the implications, the listener (or object) may be. I learned to choose my words more carefully.

I don’t think I have the power to stop our salesmen from calling the football team a widget. They’d probably scoff at my argument, just as I did back in college. On the other hand, I do have the responsibility to try and teach our team what this new widget is and to create new widgets for the team, and help the sales team use widgets to drive more sponsorship revenue for the club.

I realize I’m talking about two things at once here.

On the one hand I’m pointing to one of our biggest challenges / opportunities: how do we re-train our staff, who are excellent salesmen of traditional sponsorships, to realize the value of the Website and all the “virtual inventory” we have to offer? How do I cause an organization grounded in tradition to develop what I call “interactive imagination?”

On the other hand, I’m touching on a very crucial subject for the overall value of our Web content. RSS.

Call it whatever you like, content syndication (and pirating) is all the rage these days, and it’s a hard thing to get my mind around When I stop to think about it, there are dozens of ways we could use the widget concept to expand the distribution of our content. So many distribution channels, so hard to control.

Inside our social network, we could give our fans the means to publish their own content under our brand.

Someone recently said that widgets are badges. If that’s true, and customers will wear badges for brands, then maybe we should give our fans ways to make their own? Maybe we start with a personalized graphic, for example, that fans can place in their E mail footer – which would link to their personal page inside the Colts Fan Network? That is fans syndicating their own content and driving traffic for the Colts. Seems like a good idea to me.