The Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive division partnered with news aggregation platform Daylife to develop the widget, one of a suite of portable applications the media property has begun rolling out as part of its revamped coverage of the 2008 Presidential elections.

The "Issue Coverage Tracker" allows users to read articles, breaking news and commentary right in the application's window, and also to choose which candidates or topics to stay updated on. Customization was key, according to Jim Brady, executive editor, washingtonpost.com, who said: "Some people don't care about what everyone is saying about everything. They just want to know about the press that's covering their Senator, or Giuliani, or the war in Iraq."

While driving traffic back to the Web site is one of the goals behind the widget, exposing The Washington Post brand to a younger reader base that may not be familiar with it--via sites like Facebook and MySpace--is equally important.

"We're measuring how much traffic gets driven back to our site, but that's not the only metric," said Brady. "Having a cool widget on Facebook is a good thing for us, because it uses a small space to show off a feature that says you can get valuable info from washingtonpost.com."

Brady added that if publishers build widgets just to drive traffic, they're missing the point: "A lot of people are putting widgets on sites that they use all day long--they may not go to other sites. Making our content portable is an important part of our core philosophy that our readers should be able to engage with our content and with each other around our content where and how they choose."

By October, washingtonpost.com plans to follow the "Issue Coverage Tracker" with another widget that will keep track of campaign fund-raising and public appearance info, with trivia- and game-based applications also coming down the pike.

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