New utilities powered by Amazon

Sep 18, 2007 09:26 GMT  ·  By

The famous website Amazon rolled out Amazon Widgets, a simple way to customize your blog or page with tiny utilities which provide valuable information related to this service. For example, you can create a product cloud or a wish list related to Amazon and publish it straight on your blog. Obviously, for free. As far as I can see, the Amazon Widgets are somehow similar with Google's Gadgets, small utilities which can be published on the iGoogle page in order to obtain a certain type of info straight on your page without having to visit the main page of the product.

The interesting aspect of these gadgets is that they can represent an important source of money because the parent company also introduced the Amazon Associates program which can bring several goodies for the registered participants.

"Bloggers and active online social networkers have asked us for a fun and interesting way to display Amazon products on their pages as a way to showcase their favorite things. With Amazon Widgets, they can now do this and make money at the same time," said Sean McMullan, Manager, Amazon Associates.

These gadgets can be very useful if you're an addicted Amazon user because you can personalize your blog with very attractive utilities. As I said, they are quite similar with the Google Gadgets, the tools which are now compatible with several Google solutions such as the Personalized Homepage and the Desktop Search technology. The Amazon widgets are also praised by the Amazon merchants who might record a boost in sales due to them.

"The Amazon Unbox Video Previewer widget is an innovative way for our users to discover new content available on Amazon Unbox. If they like what they see in a preview, they can quickly and easily click on the link and be taken to Amazon Unbox to download it to their own library," said Michael Raneri, CEO of MeeVee.