Widsets ready to open its doors

It seems I may have done Widsets a disservice in this previous post: 'Long tail will wag the mobile internet dog'
In that I said: "Widsets.com allows you to choose fasterfuture as a widget to download to your mobile - and that delivers every post as it's made from this blog to an organised rss feed. But there are few design options, no ad model (from a ugc perspective), no ability to add code etc etc."
And that is the case for a lone user.
But I caught up with Kaj Hege Haggman (Widsets business development manager) last night and he says Widsets will soon be offering a development pack for content owners to have a play with.
Using that publishers will be able to deliver a much richer experience more like the Wikipedia widget currently available in the widset library. So look out for that here by the end of the month.
There's still no plan to allow publishers to add their own code for ad revenues (eg adsense or admob) yet - but this is (says Hege) because this is still an emerging business. They want to grow the thing first.
Interestingly the idea that anyone can create a widget using anyone else's rss feed - a natural assumption for anyone having a play with the tools widsets offers - is ruled out in the small print. In a tipped hat towards copyright law, the T&Cs tell users they must ask the permission of the content owner to use their stream.
I understand why Nokia-owned Widsets wants that get-out clause, and I also understand why they don't want to draw too much attention to it (hello YouTube!).
I think the joy of it will be users mashing up their own feeds/needs etc and taking whichever content they want to use for their personal use.
Which is why, to me, offering a way for the content provider to monetise, is critical.
As, I've said before - look at what google adsense (the most effective widget ever) did for the long tail on the fixed line internet...
Nokia are really buying into the notion of widgets full stop. Nokia's Ganesh Sivaraman is joining with Ajit Joaker to run a Nokia Widgets workshop in London today.

2007: year of the widget


This video, from here