WorldNow, a leading CMS provider for local television news sites that total over 19 million visitors monthly, has partnered with JS-Kit to provide them with a number of community based widgets that will be embedded across their sites. JS-Kit, founded in 2006, creates simple widgets that can be implemented with only a few lines of code (you can see our introductory review of them here).
Besides JS-Kit’s flagship commenting widget, WorldNow will be adding Ratings, Score, Reviews, Navigator, and Polls to their sites. WorldNow has 320 television customers, including a number of ABC and NBC affiliates (example). Advertising revenues from the JS-Kit widgets will be split 50/50 between the two companies.
JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux sees the partnership as a huge step for the company, which will be significantly increasing its reach. While he concedes that many of WorldNow’s 19 million readers probably won’t use the commenting system (at least at first), he says there will still be very sizable growth in the company’s user base.
This may be the case, but it’s hard to gauge just how much they stand to gain from WorldNow’s expansive readership – few people are used to the idea of participating in a community on a news site. Loux also believes that with the charging atmosphere of the economy, companies will be more likely to turn to companies like JS-Kit for commenting systems rather than build their own in-house.
JS-Kit is obviously maturing as a company, having grown from a basic commenting system to a full-featured suite that includes APIs, security, and OpenID integration. In January the site also announced a partnership with HaloScan, which provides easily-deployable comment systems for 489,300 sites. These partnerships should put them in a good position to take on the other players in this space, which include Disqus, SezWho, and IntenseDebate.