Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

With all of the video widget companies launching lately my thoughts turned again to the widget and what it means to the distribution of content. Of course the widget is a new form of content distribution that will allow content to be transported easier than it ever has before but what else do widgets mean to content producers? They mean we can share the content we consume with our audiences in ways we couldn’t before, at least not in an easy way.

As most of you know, I have started including all of the posts I read and find interesting in the “Posts Worth Reading” section on the far right side of the site. Initially I did it because I thought it was fun from a technology perspective and I wanted to play with all of Google Reader’s features (oh, and Rick and Jake were doing so the peer pressure was there). I never knew if there would be much value there for all of you but I had a feeling there would.

As I started to see the stats come it confirmed the suspicians I had. You guys loved the links to all the posts I had found interesting. It makes a lot of sense since I spend a lot of time reading up on certain things and I would be able to find the most interesting posts thus saving you all a lot of sifting. This looks a lot like the major media sources who have built up trust with the communities they serve and can act as a content recommender.

Now there is a new service that allows bloggers (and others) to create personal network search widgets. Lijit, based in Colorado, is helping content producers and inidividuals share all of their content with their readers and networks. For example, I can put together a search that uses my LinkedIn contacts, Flickr photos, MySpace page, Olson’s Observations, my delicious links and anything else you can think of as the base.

The idea hinges on the fact that readers of this blog would want to search all of the other things I am consuming or producing in order to find other great stuff. Seems like a pretty good idea considering the popularity of the “Posts Worth Reading” section on this site.

I’d love to hear what you guys think of this. Do you think people that read certain people want to know what those people are reading, viewing and creating? I do and I bet you guys do too. In a world with an over abundance of content we all need trusted filters and widgets will allow our trusted filters to provide links to the best of the best in terms of content.