Can Widgr Fill a Market Niche?

I’ve blogged before about the need for a marketplace of portlets.   I’ve lamented the lack thereof in fact.  So I was happy to hear about a new offering in the Widgr Marketplace site.  Widgr, in beta right now, intends to offer a variety of portlets, widgets, gadgets, iframes, and other pieces of functionality for use on as many sites as possible.  As a matter of fact, their vision extends across the entire portal and content management world.  Here’s a partial screenshot from their page:

Widgr Supports a Variety of Platforms

As you can see, they hit every major portal platform and intend to throw in Adobe CQ5 to boot.  When you do a search on their catalog, you have the option to filter by:

• Portlet JSR 168
• Portlet Jsr 286
• Portal – IBM API
• Google Gadget
• Web Part
• iWidget
• iView
• OpenSocial Gadget
• Flex
• iFrame
• Other

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As you can see, their ambition extends beyond just one vendor.

What’s Great

Here’s a list of what I like about the site:

1. The UI is nice.  It’s easy to view and easy to consume the content and offers the latest web 2.0 interface.
2. Widgr offers extensive filtering options based on platform, technology, business catagories etc.
3. Speedy delivery with quick page views.
4. They demonstrate some portlets.  I was able to see an example of an Alfresco portlet working.  It’s just one example but it looks like they want to have multiple platforms up and running so you can see the portlet, gagdet, or web part in action. Of course, it’s only working for portlets right now.

Still Early in the Game

While their ambition is large and frankly great to see, the beta suffers from a lack of portlets and web parts.  I don’t have a full count of what they offer but I believe it’s less than 20.  That means they are still in working to figure everything out and get it working.  I suspect they still need to build out infrastructure so you can view widgets and web parts.

All that said, Widgr is off to a great start.  If they could become a clearinghouse for this type of functionality, it really could make life a lot easier to find what you need for your particular site.  They just need to convince those who make portlets, gadgets, and web parts and of course market it to those who would download them.