As Verizon's Widget Bazaar vision rolls out, excitement for EBIF applications is spreading with increased urgency. FiOS's new widgets, including Facebook and Twitter on TV, are examples of these micro-apps that can spin up in short order.
 
Leslie Ellis, technology analyst for Multichannel News, breaks EBIF all the way down to “ee-biff” in today's feature. She cautions, "if consumers are exposed only to EBIF triggers that lead exclusively to ads, they could easily 'learn,' incorrectly, that clickable things on the TV screen are ads, so why bother."
 
Ellis reports: "The word from Comcast: Eleven million set-tops will be EBIF-enabled by year-end; shloads more next year. Applications will be launched in three categories: Content-based (a better way of saying “program synchronous”), widget-oriented (meaning not tied to a particular show), and guide extensions." executives are similarly headlong into EBIF, which is good news – because if consumers are exposed only to EBIF triggers that lead exclusively to ads, they could easily “learn,” incorrectly, that clickable things on the TV screen are ads, so why bother.
 
OEDN will agree, 2010 is “the year of EBIF.”