Think distribution. HotOrNot is a single site, which coincidentally just sold for $20 million. AddHer is distributed across all social networks. It's all about distribution, and as the AddHer team executes the rest of their plans (whatever those may be), they'll have millions of users at their fingertips.
Didn't hot or not actually have revenue of several million dollars per year? I'm failing to see how this is making money. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it evolves going forward.
The idea of embeddable-apps-in-a-box, or "the widget is the platform", seems pretty compelling to me. What are your reasons for thinking it's over-hyped?
I don't find the "most widgets are trivial" argument compelling; the large portion of the internet devoted to porn doesn't detract from the rest of it, and likewise, the uselessness of unpopular widgets doesn't detract from usefulness of popular ones.
I really like Google's widget advertising service that let you dive deep into content without leaving a page. For example, I watched all 6 video clips on a National Geographic widget ad for their new "6 degrees" show. I'd have never navigated to another page to do the same thing.
I think we're just at the beginning of widget up-take... but I could be wrong, and would like to hear the arguments from the other side (perhaps there good discussions of this elsewhere already?)
Perhaps I'm more selfish than the rest of you, but I am starting my company because I want to Win. I want to make a better product than you, have my users love my product more than yours, make more money off it than you, and get more positive press than you. I want to Win, and unlike most people, I really believe I can Win.
