Widgets and Badges

In the post-modern, atomic world of the web, information is no longer presented in a monolithic package, but is broken up into "parts" and published and syndicated where desired. Widgets and badges represent examples of these "web parts" wherein people and publishers can copy and paste various micro-content as they please. That the upcoming, highly regarded Web 2.0 Expo has a whole session on this validates the rise of widgets and badges in the realm or publishing and marketing on the web.

EventSpan will also have various widgets and badges for individuals and web publishers to post virtual events - webinars, webcasts, etc. - that they recommend or are going to attend. You can see a sneak peak in the picture from our soon-to-be-launched Eventspan homepage illustrating this. With these distributed publishing "parts" third parties - bloggers, web publishers, mainstream online publications - can snip and pull embeddable content, such as online event listings, to display on their sites that's editorially relevant.

In academic circles there's an old adage pertaining to teaching careers that says "Publish or perish." For the web, it's "Distribute or die." Widgets and badges are a great way to distribute content and keep alive on the web.