HomeGain widgets vs Trulia Widgets – explained

Several months ago, Trulia’s agressive widgetbaiting program caught the attention of many of the blogging crowd in the real estate sector. Here is a Google search of the relevant posts.

I too posted about their efforts and what I thought was wrong with them. I specifically pointed out a couple of flaws in their program. #1) The aggressiveness of their techniques to get the widgets on unsuspecting REALTORS blogs / sites in the very city where they were competing with them and #2) (and most importantly) where they even slipped them into internal pages of sites where the owners did not know that they put them there, but the (in my opinion) unscrupulous action of their website builder Number1Expert played a game of “hide the link” with their own customers.

Folks suspected privately that there HAD to be some sort of a payoff between the two companies, which was denied.

After all of the furor died down, the main thing to come out of it was that Number1Expert folks were given three choices: No widget, a different widget, or the Trulia widget.  The fact remained that Number 1 Expert customer had had a widget added to their site that strengthened their competitors search results without their knowledge.

Well, today HomeGain has announced that they are releasing widgets as well. So you would think that I would jump all over them, right? I mean widgets are evil, right?

Ummm, no.

I write widgets for part of my living. Writing great widgetbait is NOT a bad thing…when done and distributed CORRECTLY. (For transparency’s sake – I had NOTHING to do with the writing of the HomeGain widgets…no am I their “homer”.

I simply thought that this would be a good time to explain what I mean by that because in HomeGain’s effort, I see some things done right.

Step One: They are “Opt-in” vs “Opt-Out”.  This is crucial because Opt Out widgets rely on the inertia of the website not to take them out. BESIDES, to do an Opt-out widget, you MUST have complicity with someone who can “hide the link” or “hide the widget” in the site. Usually this is a webmaster who is counting on less than savvy site owners NOT to notice. (Can one REALLY do this to paying customers? Yes. If the terms of service allow it or if the customer does not rise up and say “Knock it off.” It can and does happen.

The HomeGain widgets are opt-in, meaning that a person wanting to deploy them has to initiate it. Not HomeGain.

Step Two: HomeGain went to another step. Check this out. That is their newsletter where they spell out CLEARLY who the widget is intended for and where it is best used. It is clear, concise and not intended to confuse or take advantage of the less than savvy.

So, before you ask, I will answer: When is it OK to put widgets on my site?

Fair question. All pieces of software included in a blog or site that come from an author can and do deserve to have some form of credit back to the author if requested by them. Widgets included, themes included.

Some widgets are good enough to warrant it. Some are not. Some WP Themes warrant it. Some do not even ask for it. What it really boils down to is will the amount of traffic that the widget brings in offset the value of the link(s) to the site…

The step that HomeGain took was to give the potential customer of their widget the information AND ability to make their own decision. I applaud that. They work in a sector where far to many agents are less than tech savvy and can be taken advantage of.

Trulia (IMO) took advantage of that lack of understanding and tried to get over on REALTORS. HomeGain has not.