August 28, 2007

Slide Users Adding One Million New Widgets Daily: That’s a Lot Of Widgets

Duncan Riley

27 comments »

San Francisco based social network widget provider Slide has hit new highs, with reports that they are now serving over one million new widgets daily.

Slide provides widget based photo slideshows that users can embed in a range of social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster.

Slide has impeccable backing, being founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and funded by Mayfield Fund, Khosla Ventures, BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund with a rumored round of $20million in November 2006.

Slide’s Facebook apps alone have a combined usage number in excess of 10 million users. comScore reports that Slide was serving 117 million unique visitors a month as of April 2007.

Slide competes directly with services including RockYou, Flektor, and Photobucket.

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Geoffrey Arone

August 28th, 2007 at 8:49 pm

Congrats to Slide. It’s amazing to see them doing so well especially given that they used to go head-to-head with filmloop back in the day. There should be a business school case written on Slide’s decision to change their strategy, juxtaposed with filmloop’s reluctance to do the same. For those that don’t remember, both Slide and Filmloop started out with client apps that delivered slideshows to the desktop. Slide revised their strategy, filmloop didn’t, the rest is history.
beng

August 28th, 2007 at 8:57 pm

Just curious, how does slide make money (excepting of course some big buyout for eyeballs that yahoo/microsoft/google/ebay/whoever does)…
eli

August 28th, 2007 at 9:09 pm

Duncan - please provide your perspective on beng’s question. i’d be interested to see some analysis in this blog post. Do you think that these incredibly impressive numbers mean that Slide is an impressive company that will command an impressive valuation? If so, why?
Yakov

August 28th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

That’s a lot of inventory to get monetized. Slide is a nice example of meeting a real demand from users.
Dominic

August 28th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

Personally, I find Slide to be probably the best widget out there, bar none. I’m sure they already know how to monetize it. No one puts up that kind of investment without knowing how to get a huge return. Makes all of us guess what it is eh? Trust me, they already know.
Ron Barkley

August 28th, 2007 at 9:44 pm

There’s a difference between “adding” and “serving” one million new widgets daily. Which is it?
TP

August 28th, 2007 at 9:46 pm

Unbelievable! Unreal! Stupendous! Remarkable!!! Ummm…. is Slide profitable?
Kaiser

August 28th, 2007 at 9:54 pm

Does Slide even make money? Oh, wait, better question coming: Did they start as a photo serving widget for MySpace, etc.?

- If yes, then can we please explore the definition of these other ‘widgets’ and how they relate to Slide’s so-called core business as a photo serving service for consumers?

- If no….well, the answer to the question above is ‘yes’ so let’s just explore that.
Tcrucher2

August 28th, 2007 at 10:13 pm

Slide doesn’t make any money. Im of the belief if they start introducing advertisements into their widgets they will loose an incredible number of old and new people using there service.

Think about it, when I watching a ’slide’ show - Im enjoy seeing pictures of friends, family and so forth. If an advertisement suddenly appears, Im going to think its destroying the ‘moment’ of viewing the slide show.

I have read reports of Max Levchin saying he wants to get a valuation for Slide above Paypal. The problem I believe with his assumption is that Slide cannot effectively monetize the service without seriously effectively users. It’s obvious that shoving ads in a slide show is very intrusive.

Alternatively, using ad serving technology similar to VideoEgg could work a charm …….. ?

Duncan ……. thoughts?
Wes

August 28th, 2007 at 10:32 pm

Yes, Tcruncher2, its very important to monetize the service without sidelining the people who are using it. But I think given the nature of their product that could be a tough balancing act.
nexusprime

August 29th, 2007 at 12:48 am

Lol, it will all end in tears. I love the smell of ‘99 in the morning.
nicolas block

August 29th, 2007 at 1:34 am

Its great to see the success of slide, this proves that there is a business model in creating widgets and that media aggregation and presentation is a legit marketspace.

I may as well mention another ‘competitor’: http://www.vuvox.com

They’re in the same market, more sophisticated and not so intent on widgets (though they do have a facebook app called photo slide http://www.facebook.com/apps/a.....2401170682).

If you want to see a great IMO example of a vuvox presentation, click on the link to my page above. I just installed this yesterday and I’m totally obsessed with it- enough to install it as the splash page on my site. The particular vuvox technology was like startlingly perfect for this photo essay that I made back in ‘05. It doesn’t just show slides, it makes a motion picture out of them. For me, this was precisely the point of making ‘A Brooklyn Motion Picture’. This is one of those rare examples where a new technology exceeds your expectations completely.

Nick
eli

August 29th, 2007 at 4:15 am

Somebody should create a Fake Duncan Riley blog to go along with the new Fake Arrington one. It would be boring and have little insight.

Thanks a lot for answering the questions posed to you by the people posting on the message board, Duncan. We really appreciate it!
Rue Des Quatre Vents

August 29th, 2007 at 7:02 am

Levchin’s an incredibly hard worker. There’s an amusing interview in the latest Tech Review.

https://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19186/
mirunga

August 29th, 2007 at 9:22 am

Duncan

Its great when you name all the social networks but one - hi5 that might have been a reason for causing Slide’s #s to bounce up to 1 million a day. I am originally from Mexico and all my friends are on hi5. You might want to look at the fact that a couple of weeks Slide & Rock You officially launched in hi5. Since then all my friends have started using their widgets on profile page.

In case you are too lazy to learn more about hi5, you might want to look at alexa or comscore #s. Also, while you are at it, compare it to Facebook’s #s.

http://alexa.com/data/details/.....rl=hi5.com

Have fun.
nitsuj

August 29th, 2007 at 10:18 am

“Its great to see the success of slide, this proves that there is a business model in creating widgets”

It proves that? Even without a path to monetization?

“I love the smell of ‘99 in the morning.”

Funniest thing I’ve read in a LONG time!
vsi

August 29th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

Slide will fade away… Good luck max.
anon

August 29th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

I don’t understand exactly what is being reported here. What does that mean, “serving 1 million new widgets per day”? Are 1million new widgets _created_? And how interesting is the number “137 million unique viewers per month”. Is that just the number of people who visit a MySpace page with a Slide widget on it? Whether they’re interested in the widget or not?
B S meter

August 29th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

the only biz model for slide is buyout. they’re in a precarious position… great user adoption, but no way to monetize. hopefully they’ll find a way generate revenue before they run out of money. good luck
The Credence Dot Com

August 30th, 2007 at 3:06 am

There are still chances of making some money from the current model provided slide can make people hold on there site for a longer period just like youtube. Let the people come to the site and see relevant informative slides too.

The site also needs more mature and professional look with comments and community adding value to it. One good thing with slide over youtube is - it’s not resource hungry. They can still manage it without going into loss.
Luis Brudna

August 30th, 2007 at 3:34 am

They can add Slide in Orkut also.
Ron

August 30th, 2007 at 6:25 am

I hope everyone realizes that Flektor does a whole lot more than just make slide-shows. There are users making movies using the Flektor editing suite, not just strings of photos stuck together with music in the background.
Omadsense

August 30th, 2007 at 7:19 am

Again, I’ll repeat it like the others about me - How do they Monetize this [make money].
Thats the big question……..
Basically they need to profit from this, so how are they?
I’ve used them in the past and if they even have ads i’ve never noticed and who will buy when you get it for free….???
Kristen

August 30th, 2007 at 7:41 am

I have to say, Flektor is the best multimedia tool in the web 2.0 realm. The ease of operation with their drag and drop media functions and the codes for easily embedding and linking is beyond simple. They have the backing of Fox Interactive Media who also owns MySpace. As far as I’m concerned, there is no competition.
Kristen

August 30th, 2007 at 7:49 am

I have to say, I have to agree with Ron, Flektor is the best multimedia tool in the web 2.0 realm. It’s not just about slideshows. The ease of operation with their drag and drop media functions and the codes for easily embedding and linking is beyond simple. They have the backing of Fox Interactive Media who also owns MySpace. As far as I’m concerned, there is no competition. Slide is great but Flektor does more and is just, well, easy.