Five Favorite Facebook Widgets for Business Users
From a link to your LinkedIn account to virtual sticky notes to intergrated wikis, we present five of the most business friendly Facebook widgets you'll find. — Most Facebook developers will tell you that they create two different kinds of widgets.
Context & Ripple Effects
The roundup lands at a hinge moment for Facebook's developer economy. Back in May 2007, coverage was still asking whether Facebook widgets were on the way at all; by September, analysts were sizing up the widget economy Facebook's open platform had created. A June piece had already posed the provocative framing that Facebook itself could serve as enterprise software, which is exactly the audience this CIO.com listicle addresses.
What changed by mid-November is that Facebook stopped being merely a playground for third-party widgets: the confirmed $240 million Microsoft investment at a $15 billion valuation, plus the SocialAds advertising platform and Fan pages announced on November 12, gave businesses first-party reasons to be on the network. A Forbes report of a further $500 million raise circulated as rumor only. Against that backdrop, a mainstream IT publication curating business-friendly widgets — LinkedIn account links, virtual sticky notes, integrated wikis — signals corporate buyers are being courted as a distinct developer market.
First-order effects
- Business users get a vetted shortlist of productivity widgets (LinkedIn linking, wikis, sticky notes), lowering the trial cost for companies experimenting with Facebook as a work surface rather than a social feed.
Second-order effects
- Widget developers building for professionals now compete for the same enterprise audience that Facebook's own Fan pages and SocialAds products target, forcing them to differentiate on utility rather than reach.
Third-order effects
- If enterprise adoption of third-party widgets grows, value capture splits between independent developers and the platform's first-party monetization stack — a tension that will shape whether Facebook's ecosystem stays an open developer market or consolidates around official tools.
The trend: Consumer social networks are formalizing their appeal to business users, with third-party widgets serving as the early bridge before platforms build first-party enterprise and advertising products.