How WidgetBox is killing itself…

If you aren’t familiar with the website WidgetBox, it is basically a directory of widgets. A while ago, the site introduced a “Pro” feature. This means that widget developers need to hide the adverts on their widgets for these pro users. So the widget developers miss out on advertising revenue from the pro users.

Now at this point, most sensible websites would offer a split of the profits for the developers. But no… not WidgetBox. If you don’t hide the adverts for the pro users, then your widget will get removed from the gallery. A year ago, I had about 12 widgets on WidgetBox. Since then, WidgetBox have slowly been removing my widgets in the hope that I will make them “Ad-compliant”.

I’m not an idiot.

I’m not going to chuck my bandwidth away for no financial gain. I want my money. Either from adverts or from “pro” accounts.

WidgetBox is killing itself by irritating all the developers by removing their widgets, and will one day leave the directory full of “blidgets” (free, cheap-looking, RSS reader made in Flash).

Play games & connect with Facebook

Facebook has had its service Facebook Connect launched for a year now. There are many websites which use the power of Facebook to integrate friends and social features into a website. Here are a few examples:

JibJab – send fun cards to your friends starring… your friends!

Widget Box – Widget Box enables users to promote widgets to their friends using Facebook.

FACEinHOLE – Similar to JibJab, put faces in pictures and send to friends!

Facebook has recently been promoting simple integrations of Facebook Connect within websites using the “Connect Playground” and “Connect Widgets”. One example of this integration is in Miniman Gaming, which uses the social commenting features to enable users to easily comment on games using their Facebook account.

If you want to see Connect integration in Miniman Gaming, check out a game page.