Widgetbox, a platform for the creation and distribution of web widgets, has raised $8M in a Series B round of financing led by Northgate Capital and joined by Sequoia Capital and Hummer Winblad.
The company provides tools for both novice and advanced developers to create a variety of widgets, from simple embeddable RSS feed readers (called “blidgets”) to full social network applications for Facebook and Bebo. I first met the WidgetBox team at Bebo’s platform launch event, as it had helped create at least one of the applications that launched there. Out of the 956 applications now available on Bebo, 60% have been created using Widgetbox’s “app accelerator” tool. The company also claims that 15% of the applications on Facebook have been created using its tools.
Since the widget business seems to be a lot about the numbers, here are some more: Widgetbox hosts almost 34,000 widgets in its gallery (the largest gallery on the web according to them) and these spread across over 210,000 domains and created by over 20,000 developers. Every day their widgets are viewed about 12M times. About half of Widgetbox’s advanced developers use Flash, whereas the other half use server-side languages like PHP or JSP. Widget usage on places like Blogger and MySpace is still very strong and growing. Expect to see even greater distribution when OpenSocial finally comes of age.
Widgetbox says that it will use its new funds to scale operations, promote further distribution of its widgets, and develop its monetization strategy and revenue share program. Currently, revenue is only being generated from Facebook applications that have opted in to putting ads on their canvas pages. Widgetbox will be working to create other opportunities for generating and sharing revenue with its developers, some of which will involve advertising and some which may not.
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How will these companies survive after the social networking craze dies down, which it will.
I guarantee this site is going to succeed. It’s already the top widget distributor on the web.
davetillman i agree ,and there will be alot of bankruptcy cases filed lol. i cant for social network bubble to burst
Very true… all in time. Unfortunately.
When yot say “their widgets are viewed..” what does this really mean? They do not really own any, do they?
@Yakov: When I mean “their widgets”, I mean those developed on top of their platform. As for whether Widgetbox has any ownership over the widgets built with their software, that’s a good question; I’d have to check.
i cant for social network bubble to burst
I think the idea of “community” will be around for some time, so even if Myspace dies down, there will still be blogs and news aggregators that can make use of a widget platform.
Hummer Winblad? really? they don’t do anything consumer-facing on the web.
Congrats to Wendy and team. Nicest folks around.
Mark - question is, whether they are viewed as in banners being viewed, or that they are “played” or some action taken upon them.
my assumption is that they are viewed as in banners, and they are actually played or acted upon on in 1/1000 of the times.
There are some very bright minds behind Widgetbox, I’m looking forward to their next big thing.
@Yakov - Widgetbox has gotten back to me saying that the creators are the owners of their widgets, not Widgetbox, even if the widgets are hosted on Widgetbox.
@Jonathan - I think that’s the right assumption to make, although I don’t know the actual frequency of “usage”.
Widgetbox is good stuff. Also worth checking out is SpringWidgets and Clearspring. They’re all pretty valuable services
Orchestr8 also has a widget service ( grid.orch8.net/clippings/ )that lets you visually “grab” part of any website and turn it into a widget/opensocial app/pageflakes/netvibes. Lots of fun stuff out there
As for whether Widgetbox has any ownership over the widgets built with their software, that’s a good question; I’d have to check.
Can someone please educate me on what widgetbox provides to people with development skills and hosting infrastructure? Other than making it easy to track usage, what do they provide?
Thanks for help understanding their value proposition.
Hi Jules,
Once you’ve created your widget, you’ll want to promote and distribute it. Having your widget on a publicly accessible server doesn’t guarantee that search engines and users will have an easy time finding it. It’s frustrating to create something great and have no one use it!
Registering your widget in Widgetbox’s gallery will help you increase your widget’s distribution. Your widget does not need to be hosted on Widgetbox’s systems to be listed in the gallery.
Each widget listed in the Widgetbox.com gallery is wrapped with Widgetbox’s Get Widget menu. Get Widget is a graphical interface that lets users pick which blog, social network or start page they want to install your widget to.
Widgetbox also wraps the Get Widget menu around the installed copy of a widget. This allows other users to get their own copy of your widget directly from the site it was installed to. So - your widget can be distributed from both Widgetbox.com and each and every user page your widget’s been installed to.
Sure - you could make your own Get Widget. But wouldn’t you rather spend time making widgets?
Also, the Widgetbox App Accelerator allows you to turn your widget into standalone Facebook and Bebo apps. It’s not a “cut and paste” your HTML code into a container app solution
As you mentioned, Widgetbox provides the usual commodity statistics: which sites your widget has been installed to, how many installs have occurred, impressions, etc.
Hope this helps you understand the value that Widgetbox can provide to someone with your skills and resources!
Cheers,
Widgetbox ( support at widgetbox dot com )