Sprout moves to public beta
If you need proof that widgets are popular with both publishers and viewers, take a look at Sprout, a Web app that lets you create sophisticated widgets with ease. (The widget that plays the latest episode of For Immediate Release, over on the right-hand side of this blog and wherever you, dear reader, choose to put it using the “share” code, took about 10 minutes to create using Sprout.) According to an email I received from the Sprout team, the private beta led 5,000 people to create 17,000 widgets that have been viewed by 11 million people.
Concurrent with the release of an upgrade to the application that responds to input from private beta users, Sprout has opened its doors and now is in public beta. It’s definitely worth your time to try out the service (particularly since it’s still free). More improvements are due in a month, including animations. The team also promises a way to remove the Sprout bar, the horizontal graphic attached to every widget that identifies it as a Sprout object. I suspect that’ll be part of a fee-based service, like getting Eudora email without the ads.
03/13/08 | 3 Comments | Sprout moves to public beta