New York – USA Today is plunging into a hot new Internet technology, offering users the ability to install “widgets” on their blogs and personal Web pages that contain news updates and other information from the paper.
Widgets are a Web accessory that people are using in rapidly growing numbers to jazz up their home pages, blogs and profiles on social networking platforms like Facebook or MySpace. Users of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system can also put widgets on the desktop of their computers.
Big Internet companies like Yahoo offer large varieties of widgets – Google calls them gadgets – that give snapshots of local weather, games and sports results or display pictures, for example. A startup called Slide Inc., a major provider of widgets, last month began offering the ability to place ads on them.
Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today, said in an interview Wednesday that the newspaper began offering three kinds of widgets this week at atoday.com and has plans to offer four more.
They’re all aimed at making money through advertising offered on them, though no advertisers have signed up so far, USA Today spokeswoman Alex Nicholson said. USA Today’s widgets are compatible with many blogging platforms and social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Typepad and Google’s iGoogle.
J.B. Holston, chief executive of Denver-based NewsGator Technologies, which is licensing widget technology to USA Today, said his company also has created widgets for The Miami Herald, owned by McClatchy Co., and San Jose Mercury News, owned by Denver-based Media News Group.
