Why Goowy?

A few weeks ago, Mark Blomsma wrote a post which introduced the Goowy desktop, one of the newest additions to the AOL family. Over the next few posts, I will go beyond the brief introduction and discuss some of the practical issues you will encounter while developing for this platform. To set that up, though, I’ll first try to answer the question that I asked in the title.

Goowy is comprised of two facets: the Goowy desktop and the yourminis widget API (wAPI). Developing for the Goowy desktop is done using the yourminis wAPI, but widgets developed with the wAPI are much more versatile than simply a means to add functionality to the Goowy desktop. In my opinion, this is Goowy’s biggest strength. Rather than providing an already limited potential audience, the yourminis wAPI allows for a userbase which is limited only by the appeal of your creation.

Copy Me

Those two words represent the syndication model which is available to every yourminis widget. By clicking Copy Me, a user is able to take your widget and easily add it to any website or blog (as long as you haven’t blacklisted it), as well as a growing number of other platforms. Because the widgets are built with Flash, the end result is a very slick experience. When the user clicks Copy Me, the widget flips around, displaying all of the potential targets for the copy, each one providing easy instructions on how to proceed.

What’s Happening?

Along with syndication comes some very powerful analysis tools. Although your widget can be distributed across many different sites, in many different host platforms, yourminis provides an analysis dashboard which combines all of the usage information in a single place, allowing you to study trends in a very powerful way.

And Finally...

There are some really solid features that set Goowy apart from similar widget platforms. I wasn't able to cover every area in this post, but the biggest selling point for me was the 'Copy Me' syndication model, along with the analysis tools. In my next post I’ll dive a bit deeper into the development process, pointing out some of the features, as well as some things you might want to watch out for.