Creating a widget has never been easier. Just today, Jeremiah Owyang listed on Twitter some great articles on Business Week that talks about the future of marketing being widgets. And why not…widgets are the new buzzword of the year. Everyone basically has a website now and is rapidly poaching on the social network as I type so the next “logical” observation is to explore the viral-ability of the online media. To take advantage of this growing trend, a great company called Sprout has appeared and created an awesome WYSIWYG editor-type application where you can create your own widget and have it shared with your customers, clients, and/or your friends.

I’ve been fortunate to have signed up for this service since it began and it took me for a spin. It definitely takes some time to learn, but quite easy to pick up. You can do pretty much a lot of stuff similar to Flash, but don’t be mistaken, the purpose of having a widget is not to be creative entirely, but to make sure you have can create something that is easily spread throughout the web.

So what was my result? While updating my blog here on TheLetterTwo.com, I wondered if there were any new badges from my social networks and stumbled across on Mashable’s website. To my surprise, they didn’t have a widget – well anything that could have been posted on different sites, that is. They do have a widget but only on Netvibe. As a result, I fired off a nice Twitter message to Adam Ostrow of Mashable fame asking about whether they had a badge or widget, but alas, it was not meant to be. He did suggest that I create one via Sprout, and that’s exactly what I did.

Sprout is a god-send. Thank you for allow widgets to easily be created. I’m sure that it’ll be fun to do, but will take some time. If you want to see my first draft of a widget specially for Mashable, then you can visit my widget development page on my blog.

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Ken Yeung is an web marketer experienced in helping companies build great projects leveraging Internet technologies to better engage their customers. From website builds to email marketing campaigns, online advertising & even social media, Ken understands how to make the web work for YOU. Read more about him on TheLetterTwo.com, Network Solutions' "Solutions Are Power" blog or even on Bub.blicio.us.