Widget Removal - Please Vote

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Widget Removal - Please Vote

Well my post on Widgets today generated some good comments. My favorite was the constant refrain that widgets are about self expression. Indeed.

But I also recognize that my blog has possibly gone a bit overboard. So I am going to remove a bunch of widgets next week. You get to vote for which ones should stay.

Here are the ones that are going to stay, no matter how you vote:

1) In Heavy Rotation - Sonos sponsors this widget which generates money to charity. It stays.
2) Ads - They aren't technically widgets, but they generate money to charity. They stay.
3) Portfolio company widgets; Sitepal, Etsy, Indeed, and Delicious (for old times sake). My portfolio companies are how I make money. They stay.

Everything else is subject to removal. Please vote for the ones you want to stay.

January 19, 2007 Bling , Venture Capital and Technology | Comments (58)

Comments

Fred, I love your blog, and have done for a long long time now. Really though, show a little class and nuke the useless bling.

Posted by: Nick Wilson | Jan 19, 2007 5:50:12 PM

I like and use MyBlogLog and Flickr

No strong opinions besides those.

Of course you could add the Foneshow module so people could get the A VC: My Music podcasts right on their cell phones.... :-)

Posted by: Erik Schwartz | Jan 19, 2007 5:53:27 PM

Keep MyBlogLog and Wallstrip.

Posted by: Kendall Schoenrock | Jan 19, 2007 5:58:31 PM

Just Flickr. If it weren't for the excellent posts, your Widget addiction would have made me stop coming here long ago.

It's like you were a 13 year old girl who just got a Bedazzler and decided to "Rhinestone" every item of clothing in her wardrobe. :)

Posted by: Dave! | Jan 19, 2007 6:02:02 PM

What this post needs is a voting widget.

Posted by: Liz Gannes | Jan 19, 2007 6:18:59 PM

Fred,

I like WallStrip, and of course, Flickr! I have complimented you on your photography before and would definitely not want to lose this personal perspective that it adds to your blog. Beyond that, I think the choices you have already made are good, and solid!

Posted by: Stephen L. McKay | Jan 19, 2007 6:36:16 PM

I suggest removing everything you don't mind removing. The widgets may be a form of expression, but they're visually noisy and distract from each other. The more of them you include, the fewer of them I can pay attention to. That's a bigger problem than any performance hit they cause.

They cause space problems too. There's so much stuff in your left and right columns that they extend way, way past the bottom of a post. I click here often from a feed reader, and I never see the stuff more than a quarter of the way down the page.

I would suggest dumping the charity ads too, for similar reasons. If you are concerned about the reduced charity donations, focus your site visitors' attention on the things that make money for you, then donate some portion of that to charity.

Posted by: Cynthia Closkey | Jan 19, 2007 6:46:18 PM

First, you blog loads fast for me.
I am not convinced that it is a quantity thing, because a lot of widgets (if not all of them) use ajax, so a lot of it is loading asynchronously.

Also, I second Liz on the polling widget, there are a few nice once out there.

I also think that this is something that really needs to be managed through companies like Widgetbox. As the widget platform, they should track this sort of thing and have a screen that shows how "heavy" the widget is, so that you can make a decision on who is the culprit.

Finally, I think your blog is a leaving proof and experiment of rare kind, so removing things is not necessary unless loading gets bad, which it really is not.

Alex

Posted by: Alex Iskold | Jan 19, 2007 6:50:42 PM

I don't have problem with any of the widgets, as the page load really isn't bad with your recent changes (and I usually read in my reader anyway).

However, if I had to remove any, it would be the ones that don't really gain any value from being on your site, besides the traffic. (aka. the ones that aren't fed by your activites).

Wallstrip - I love the site, but that's pretty much just an ad.

Yotta/Streampad/Last.FM - i don't know the nuances, but choose one..

Indeed - also great, but one of their widgets is sufficient.

Facebook - meh

Delicious - great, but can it be a little shorter?

Root Worms - interesting, but not that interesting. :)

ThisNext - does nothing for me..

Alacra - widget is meaningless to those who don't know what alacra is, and not necessary for those who do.

And like all your other groupies, I also have a widget I'd love to see on the blog!

If it's technically easy for you, it'd be great to rotate some of the less popular widgets in one spot, so we don't miss out on your cool finds, but aren't overwhelmed by them either..

Posted by: daryn | Jan 19, 2007 7:30:11 PM

Keep at least mybloglog and flickr. The music ones are interesting but not something I ever click into.

You might consider a bling page, with as many widgets as you can fit on it, just for fun?

Posted by: candice | Jan 19, 2007 7:33:23 PM

To Cynthia,

No, No, No! We need more people to step up to the plate when it comes to giving just a little bit of their well earned $’s! Fred is doing a very important service by reminding us all of the fact that there are people out there who are less fortunate than we are, and who can benefit from our help, without giving up our own wealth.

I always try to be polite, but if you feel this way you should be reading Larry Kudlow, and not A VC.

Posted by: Stephen L. McKay | Jan 19, 2007 7:40:54 PM

Keep 'em all! I read your blog through my Bloglines feeds, anyway...

Posted by: Chris Kerns | Jan 19, 2007 7:43:24 PM

Just make the internet faster so we'll have more widgets on your blog especially that one... I've spent some time on your widgets while you were in Italy... it was excellent (Root especially).

Maybe get ride of the shopping stuff (it's too low in the sidebar). But please continue to exepriment !!!

Posted by: leafar | Jan 19, 2007 8:38:22 PM

Fred - keep 'em all! I enjoy your blog as a whole ecosystem, a wide open window to 2.0. For me, the musings of a VC in NYC are not only captured in text. The posts are one thing (eagerly read), the widgets another (great to observe what other companies are doing cool stuff in your opinion, just by seeing their widgets on this page), and your reader's feedback on the widgets is another - all vital. And when all those elements combine together, the results are terrific. Recall the recent furor over Snap - we all benefited there. Snap probably got very useful feedback, readers were wildly entertained, tech observers got an inside view into a new service, and I bet you generated a bunch of traffic (great for charity) from non-regular readers wondering what the fuss was about. As I say, it's about the whole ecosystem, not just the text posts. As for download times? I read it in a feedreader (no issue), and visit the actual site maybe once a week to check out the odd video, or check out your current listening lists. I know what I'm getting at that point ... maybe 10 seconds of hanging around for everything to load - big deal!

Posted by: tobias | Jan 19, 2007 8:44:23 PM

Keep the mybloglog and flickr widgets, and consider removing the facebook widget (add me as a friend first).

Everything else can be removed, if you wish, but I really don't mind if they all stay--I think the widgets add personality to the site and make it seem more laid back. The center column loads instantly, so I can read your posts while everything else is loading.

Posted by: apseek | Jan 19, 2007 9:11:40 PM

The biggest problem of evangelism is that your own 'voice' diminishes your 'hearing'. I know that there is some value in VC playing tthe role of an unofficial evanglists for companies in their portfolio but I don't think that is worth it if the price to pay is lack of clear and objective vision.

Posted by: Don Park | Jan 19, 2007 9:37:39 PM

Your environment is rich and ready. Loads fast, delivers a punch.
It your writing is not my cup of tea I simply scroll to widget land.

Posted by: Bradley | Jan 19, 2007 9:49:17 PM

I'm going to come at it again from a pure performance perspective.

From where I sit, the biggest problem with your page load times isn't the widgets at all: it's the blogbeat.net analytics javascript.

All the widgets loaded superfast for me, but tracker.blogbeat.net hung for a very long time. Doesn't happen always, but often enough to point a finger. Now that Blogbeat has been acquired by Feedburner, and you are already using Feedburner stats, I'd say it's a pretty easy decision to eliminate that script.

I'd also chuck the Wallstrip/Revver video widget. Not only are there a lot of components, but it's very weighty — the Javascript alone is nearly 130KB! And why do you need another video widget anyway?

Posted by: jim santo | Jan 19, 2007 10:08:26 PM

if you take down the bling, where will i send people for a one-stop-shop answer the question "what's a widget"?

Posted by: Lucinda | Jan 19, 2007 10:27:05 PM

Truth be told, I hadn't visited your site in ages (RSS all the way), so wasn't really sure what all the fuss was about...

But now that I'm here... C'mon... I mean, really. It's like a freaking MySpace page ;-)

I love your content Fred, but there's no way I'm coming back regularly (not that you have to care about that, of course!) while it's a minefield in terms of where I can and can't move my mouse or can and can't click without something totally unexpected happening!

Again, love the blog, but please lose everythin that's non-essential. I get the ones that generate money for charity (though I'm sure there are things you could do to generate more cash with the hundreds of thousands of pixels you have in widgets) and the portfolio companies (some of them). But most of the rest (especially the music ones) aren't helping you or readers.

You could probably cut down to a "measly" 5 or 6 and actually have a far leaner blog.

Hell, if you want, Fred, we can swing a new design your way that'll streamline the entire site, give it a facelift and, tastefully, incorporate your favorite widgets :-)

Posted by: Jeremy Wright | Jan 19, 2007 10:45:41 PM

I agree with Candice: "Keep at least mybloglog and flickr... You might consider a bling page."

Posted by: Andrew | Jan 19, 2007 10:57:18 PM

Fred,

I like the bling and the widgets, it adds context and flavor to your commentary. During the day I read your blog via an RSS/Atom reader, and will check the full blog for updates to your fancy window decorations later in the evening.

I'd also like to state that I would have never posted comments on your blog (participated in the conversation) had it not been for the bling; often it makes me giggle. I have this mental image of you huddled under the blankets with a penlight clutched between your teeth, frantically writing posts, tossing in a new widget to "tag" your blog (NYC graffitti style). Rushing, 'cuz your morning posts must be finished before your wife rolls over, snatches back the blankets and clocks you upside the head with a pillow.

The charity badges are a wonderful thing. By the way, Yahoo! For Good http://brand.yahoo.com/forgood/ has a new widget. Y! For Good had a contest for a matching gift in Dec. 2006 (up to $50K USD), please see: Y! For Good - Network of Giving at http://promotions.yahoo.com/giving/

Frankly, I can get my fill of dry, distant "dead white guy" corporate communication all day long at the office (see postscript) . The bling makes you seem much more approachable and certainly alive.

I've not had dreadful performance on page loads since the re-design(s), but I agree with commenter jim santo on the JavaScript burden.

One technique that may be worth trying: Goowy http://goowy.com, has developed a toolkit called "YourMinis" http://www.yourminis.com that allows a website/blog to load a variety of widgets in a "dashboard". The dashboard/tab seems to be similar to the palettes available in many desktop image editing tools. It would be interesting to see if the goowy dashboard could be used as a container for your more heavyweight widgets, then loaded on demand by your blog "customers" by clicking through a link in the sidebar.

P. S. The "dead white guy" remark is a direct quote from cellist Yo-Yo Ma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_Yo_Ma. He famously refers to Baroque European classical music as "music by dead white guys", even though Ma is considered a master of the genre.

Posted by: hello | Jan 19, 2007 11:53:04 PM

Well looking at it from an internet marketers point of view, have you done any tracking / testing to see which services are being used by your visitors?

Have a play on CrazyEgg.com or something similar and see which items are of most interest.

That will then give you data you can use for your business.

It might be good to also rotate some things around in your sidebars with some taguchi based split testing software so the order is different, colors change etc.

I should also point out that your content loads first, which is most important, so I am already reading before all the widgets are loaded.

Posted by: Andy Beard | Jan 19, 2007 11:53:30 PM

Maybe leave the widgets and stop writing :)

Posted by: howard Lindzon | Jan 20, 2007 12:28:34 AM

Fred,

Lose the bling, keep the blog.

You are on widget-overload - time to sign up for Widgets Anonymous. At least be selective - otherwise it detracts from the content.

Stu

Posted by: Stu Phillips | Jan 20, 2007 1:35:02 AM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC