I was lucky enough to get a seat at London’s 2008 WidgetWebExpo chaired by Ivan pope. The event was held in “sunny” London and there were a range of speakers; Chris Thorpe (MySpace), Eyal Magen (Gigya) and Paul Smith (Umee) to name a few.

Of course I attended to explore the possibilities of widgets and SEO but found myself with a wealth of widget knowledge instead. Some really interesting facts and figures which may surprise a lot of you, but here’s a summary of some data:

•    The number 1 widget in the world (installs) = YouTube
•    The number 1 MySpace comment = “Thanks for the add”
•    Facebook “gifts” application made $30 million last year alone
•    The average widget only lasts 200 page views
•    Every human can only hold 150 meaningful relationships at once, the rest are lightweight
•    Each widget has a maximum lifespan of 6 weeks
•    For every widget install you should expect a maximum of 50 unique visitors

I also copied down some internal Gigya data to show the most common uses for widgets:

Anyway, I learned a lot more than what was written down on this post, but of course you have to hold back something for yourself! Thanks to all the guys that took part and I look forward to the next one!