Widgets and extras for social networks

As I becoming more interested in learning about possible integrations for my own social network system, I keep on finding new and old tools and widgets which can be used. The question to be answered is: are they worthwhile and will the community take up the possibility to integrate these widgets in their page. That remains to be seen. I’ll be taking a closer look in the next few weeks into this subject area.

The first widget of the day comes from Favorite Thingz. They have been around since the middle of 2006 if I get my facts correct and this is how they describe their product:

FavoriteThingz.com provides a simple, fast, and reliable service that enables publishing a badge/ widget of a user’s favorite bands, movies, teams, stores, services, and brands.

FavoriteThingz.com helps users promote brand awareness and brand loyalty of their FavoriteThingz. The FavoriteThingz.com badge/widget can be directly linked from to any site that accepts our badge/widget, including popular sites like MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga, Friendster, Tagworld, Typepad, Blogger, and hi5.

Sounds to me like a good way to get community members to participate more in pushing their own page in a community forward.

Another “gadget” of sorts is a flash-based virtual world/space called MyMiniLife in which you can create a character and the space in which the character lives. You earn your money to buy items to place in this space through daily logins etc. You can interact with other users, chat, leave messages and supposedly more. It’s a big business at the moment creating these widgets and mostly targeted are the teenager groups.