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Web strategist Jeremiah Owyang recently interviewed widget expert Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews.com.

In the interview, Rumford provided some interesting points. Although widgets are a widely used facet of Web 2.0, there are some pitfalls to watch out for.

Following are a couple pitfalls, as explained by Rumford:

• Not planning for the continual evolution of the Facebook platform and for evolution of the widget itself.
  Facebook is in a continual state of evolution. You need to leverage the opportunities that those changes bring. If the changes brings challeng, you need to find a way to work around it.
• Not looking at how the widget leverages the social graph.
  Don’t try to shoehorn your application by putting it into a Facebook widget. Your widget needs to facilitate new connections that did not previously exist.

With the continual changes and development of Facebook, the development process really starts when the application is released. Users will provide feedback, and that is when the development of the widget needs to evolve.

Widgets need the scalability factor so that they can grow as their environment grows.

To help overcome pitfalls:

Budget resources and plan on innovations.

Keep an eye out for the competitive landscape, and make sure to look at metrics of the application such as install and uninstall rates.

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