Widgets and identity

The Chinwag event last night on "Media Widgetized"* was well attended by people from startups and big technology brands alike. The panel all had interesting and informed things to say, and Steve Bowbrick was a funny and effective Chair. Two good writeups of the content of the debate are here and here.

For readers who don't know what a widget is, take a look at the first writeup link above for a choice of explanations and a picture of some widgets.

My identity angle: widgets enable us to track, interact with and remix diverse information-based "stuff" (weather updates, stock prices, mini games, our social network profiles etc.) within the unifying framework of our own online personas, both public (blog, public start page etc.) and private (desktop widgets, private start page etc.).

Widgets are as much about performing our identity superpublically as they are about witnessing the world through the filter of our identity (i.e. our preferences and interests). Which is precisely why the commercial world is at once desperately keen to leverage widgets to extend the reach and resonance of their brand, and yet also petrified of their potential for disrupting and subverting that brand.

A notional example: would McDonalds want a Big Mac mini game widget placed ironically on a high-traffic blog documenting that company's role in the ongoing destruction of rainforests? I think probably not. It will be interesting to see how masters of big media marketing like McDonald ("I'm loooooving it!") cope as the web encroaches increasingly on their branding comfort zones.

One thing's for sure, though: widgets are conspiring to make the process of brand identity evolution a whole lot more fluid, transparent and predicated on authentic engagement and relationship by the brand with its community. And that has to be a good thing.

*"Widgetized" spelled with a z for search engine optimisation, seemingly—though quite why Chinwag prefer to get the attention of Americans and Australians at the expense of us Brits who are the ones likely to attend their events I'm not entirely sure!

At Chinwag tomorrow

In case any readers are going to be in the central London area tomorrow evening, I will be attending the Chinwag Live event on "Media Widgetized" and would love to see you there!

Speaking at chinwag live: dark side of social media

I have been invited to speak at the chinwag live event on June 19 in Soho, London. The topic is the "dark side of social media":

Despite the hype there are downsides to social media - virtual problems are invading our real lives, or is it vice versa..?

Identity theft, scurrilous accusations, libel, stalking, scams and even violence. Social media, once hailed as the great new "Naked Conversation" where the planet would talk to itself in a spirit of open debate and companies would 'crowd source' fantastic new products, is starting to turn sour.

High profile bloggers like Rachel From North London and Kathy Sierra have been stalked online. Teenagers are finding out the downside to having a MySpace page as cyber-bullying takes off.

Brands are finding that their carefully crafted marketing campaigns are being remixed and mashed-up in a way they never intended. Political sites are swarmed with negative comments. Comment spam is hampering open debate. Splogs are stealing content. Social Media is turning out to have a very unsocial dark side. What can be done about it?

Can an online code of conduct have a hope of succeeding? Will freedom of speech be affected? How can organisations prevent their interactions with social media from backfiring? Chinwag Live: The Dark Side of Social Media will look at all these questions with a panel of experts.

Lots to get our teeth into, then; it promises to be a pretty lively debate!