This year "is going to be the year of the widget," Dan Schnapp, 38, lead partner in Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP's new media, entertainment and technology group, tells Tech Confidential in our Behind the Money interview.

Schnapp, who crafts and negotiates deals that enable large media firms to leverage their intellectual property online, recently worked on a wide-ranging pact between Viacom Inc. and Microsoft Corp. that covers advertising, content distribution and gaming. In our discussion, Schnapp talks about the sticking points in the types of deals he works on, and how they get resolved. He also touches on the technologies he thinks will have an impact on content deals this year, including virtual worlds and widgets.

"Users want to customize their experience," Schnapp says. "They want to be able to personalize the user experience."

Social networks can help mediate that experience, with widgets enabling the kind of individual engagement that Internet users want. "What's really going to draw in the user in is how does the content provider, how does the advertiser, interact directly with the user, and how does the user interact directly with their friends and their family," Schnapp says. "Widgets are going to be the interface for that." - Mary Kathleen Flynn

See profile on Schnapp on TheDeal.com

Click To Play