Tag - widgets

How much blog bling is too much?

Context: I was just at A VC – a blog by Fred Wilson, a New York venture capitalist that I follow from time to time.

He has about 5 million widgets and doodads hanging off his blog. He’s even worse, if possible, than Matthew Ingram.

Let me count. In the left sidebar Fred’s got:

1. A picture
2. Feedblitz RSS subscription form
3. Yahoo! search widget
4. Assorted other Fred Wilson RSS feeds
5. My Blog Community photo widget
6. Gotham Gal’s Stuff
7. Podcasts he listens to
8. Amazon music widget with about 15 albums in it
9. tourb.us concert widget
10. Streampad My Music widget
11. Last.fm music widget
12. iTunes music widget
13. Shopcasting widget from ThisNext with about 6 products and full descriptions
14. Alacra store search widget
15. Blog categories
16. Blog archives
17. Blog about
18. Blog stats
19. Various links: axis of evil
20. Fred’s social networks
21. Facebook widget
22. LinkedIn widget
23. Some other links

In the right sidebar, not to be outdone, he’s got:

1. Sitepal voice message widget
2. Personality profile link (what a shock, he’s not high on aesthetics)
3. Federated Media (FM) publishing banner ad (skyscraper format)
4. Flickr widget
5. Wallstrip video widget
6. Shakeshack widget
7. More FM ads
8. VC Feedburner network widget
9. WordofBlog widget
10. Ad for another of his blogs
11. Del.icio.us linkroll widget with about 20 recent links, including brief descriptions
12. Indeed.com job posting “jobroll” widget
13. Another Indeed.com widget, this one focusing on salaries in NY
14. Blogroll with about a hundred blogs in it
15. Another shopcasting widget from ThisNext with about 10 products, pictures, and descriptions in it
16. Recent searches widget
17. Contextual text link ads from Yahoo!
18. Contextual text link ads from Google (could be against AdSense terms & conditions if Yahoo! is also being used – I think it is, actually)
19. Recent posts

As I said earlier: holy freaking mother. Stop the insanity!