There was a time when Google’s widget service iGoogle seemed immensely popular. It barely gets a mention – by Google or anyone else – these days, so maybe it’s time for a different approach – and Spain’s Ducksboard could be that approach.
Ducksboard is a simple, good-looking dashboard upon which you can add a wide range of widgets supporting popular online services. It can track Facebook fans for a particular Page, Twitter followers, replies or search queries; display Google Analytics stats; the checkin count for a particular Foursquare venue (including how many people are currently checked in); show MailChimp campaign stats, Zendesk support tickets and more.
It’s possible to drag-and-drop widgets as you choose, and you can create multiple dashboards, accessible from a drop-down menu in the right-hand top corner of the screen.
Ducksboard picked up almost 10,000 users during its beta phase. It certainly has a sense of unified style as all the widgets are designed by the Duckboard team. Some widgets, such as the Twitter follower counter, take time to begin displaying data but the overall user experience is simple an clean.
Whether or not you have a use for such a dashboard depends on whether you use the services it currently supports. Geckoboard is a strong competitor (see our previous coverage here) that currently supports more services. However, Ducksboard is a visually appealing alternative that aims at anyone with an active online life who wants to keep track of key stats from a single location.
Additional services and datapoints are set to be added over time. The product is currently priced at $29 per user, per month for unlimited widgets and dashboards, the ability to make dashboards publicly viewable and access to the Ducksboard API. More pricing options will be made available in coming weeks, along with the option for businesses to white-label dashbaords for their own needs.
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