A New iGoogle Gadget: “What’s Popular”

By Jacquelyn Kerby, Advertising Coordinator, Client Services

Yesterday, I tried using the new iGoogle gadget called "What's Popular". Much like Social Media sites, Digg and Reddit, the gadget allows you to view and share popular web pages throughout the internet. I played around with it a little bit and found it to be quite interesting. I was instantly able to submit stories, videos or image links I wanted to share by inserting the URL into the bottom of the gadget. I thought I would take a moment to share my experience with some later adopters. Through my test run here are a few key things I noticed about the gadget that might be helpful:

1. The links can be submitted either anonymously or publicly. If you choose to share publicly, you’re able to edit the title and description of your submission, which is kind of fun. The “My Adds” tab stores these submissions, allowing you to easily access them at a later time.
2. After reviewing the application, I tried submitting a site and found it had already been listed within the gadget. My submission simply acted as a positive rating, thus increasing the number of “pops” the link had received. This number appears below the story, next to the link. If you’re submission is successful, you can see how popular your listing is, according to the number of “pops” it has received.
3. For a better experience of this gadget, I recommend expanding it in your iGoogle desktop. This allows you to sort submissions by story, video or image, and by date or most popular.

Click to view larger image.

This “What’s Popular” gadget has generated a lot of buzz since its release a few days ago. As more people start using it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the gadget evolved into the next big social media site. Either way, this might be a great way to promote a client’s product or service. I’m not sure there’s a way to track the amount of traffic generated to sites within “What’s Popular”, but this still might another way for Search Marketers to generate buzz for their clients, or at least build up some link popularity.