As I was dropping a comment on Jake McKee’s post on the Cloverfield widget, I realized that while that widget is undeniably cool, there are some basic things missing from it. Even more than that, there’s some functionality no one has really built yet that I’m a bit surprised to find still missing.

First off, the missing components from the widget are:

1) The ability to link to something – for instance a page on the official Cloverfield website – where I can send people to get the code for themselves. I have to link to someone’s post about the widget if I can’t embed it myself.

2) While there are a full selection of options to grab embed code or have the widget automatically added to your Facebook or MySpace profile or other personalized site, there’s no “Email this” option. That’s a no-brainer and a seriously overlooked feature. Adding that can add to the potential audience exponentially.

The larger thing I think is missing right now – and maybe I just haven’t seen it – is an “Add to Twitter” option along the lines of “Add to Facebook.” I know there are some WordPress plug-ins that automatically create Twitter updates including links back to new posts, but there’s nothing like that that I’ve seen that takes something like this widget and automatically posts it as a Tweet.

Is there value in that? I think so. I know some people – including myself – get frustrated when all someone Twitters is “New blog post: www.tinyurl…” without any sort of additional commentary. But Twitter is a social network just like other sites, albeit a stripped down one. That sort of thing has the potential to add value if there are things people would just like to be able to shoot at their list of followers.

And considering Twitter is a conversation-heavy network – unlike others – the potential for click-throughs from those followers is at least a little higher. Both Jeremiah and Peter have excellent posts up about the value of the Twitter conversation.

While it’s great that Paramount has decided that pageviews on the Cloverfield site don’t really matter and instead are facilitating conversations elsewhere, I think that there’s still something to be said for having an official resource for this sort of thing. Just a page. No need to draw a ton of attention to it, but it should still be there so that people like Tom don’t have to go searching for it.

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