AboutUs.org widget – finally

A couple of days ago I got an email from Kristina from AboutUs.org telling me about their new widget (also see their blog).

They’ve had a badge before (simply an image) you could add to your web site to link to your own page at AboutUs.org, but now you can get something even more useful. The widget is similar to the CrunchBase.com widget which is good because then you can use both the AboutUs.org widget and the CrunchBase.com widget when your writing about a company/web site/web service. The AboutUs.org provides information like domain name, site title and topics from a web site.

So for example if this article would be about the web site AboutUs.org, then I could add the widget for AboutUs.org at the bottom of this post to provide the readers some additional information on the web site. The users also get the possibility to edit the information in the AboutUs page thanks to an edit button inside the widget.

The widget is a fantastic new service from the AboutUs team, but there are a couple of down-sides:

• They don’t have an API for their widget. It would be great if they added this to search their wiki for a specific web site, and if you get a match you could create the widget. This would make it possible to create a WordPress plugin to automatically include widgets in your blog posts when-ever you write about a site.
• There should be options to include more, or other information then just the standard information. For example a short description and the site thumbnail. To avoid too much information in the widget they could use a “show more info” link to expand the widget if the reader want more information.
• If you’re logged in at AboutUs and press the edit button you should be taken directly to the edit page instead of the page about the site.

I know this is a new service so I hope they develop it further.