ClearSpring Gets $5.5M from AOL Founders
Red Herring is reporting that AOL founders
Steve Case and Ted Leonsis have invested $5.5-million, as a second round investment, into
widget syndication platform Clearspring. Alex
profiled
ClearSpring back in November and other widget platforms we've covered
before on Read/WriteWeb include Snipperoo, Widgetbox, Fox's SpringWidgets and MuseStorm.
In a recent post, VC Brad Feld says there are 23 "widget management systems" and he suggests that most of them are heading for a disappointing end. He also notes that many existing web services companies are 'widgetizing' their services:
"As an investor, I’ve looked at and decided not to invest in “widget management systems.” However, all of the companies I’ve invested in that provide web services to publishers (including NewsGator, FeedBurner, Lijit, ClickCaster, and Me.dium) are “widgetizing” their services. FeedBurner is an obvious platform in my universe for this (given their broad relationship with over 350,000 publishers) as they have demonstrated with their integration of Headline Animator with Stats, SpringWidgets, and Lijit Search."
Also there are the widget activities of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and indeed AOL itself. So it's clear that widgets are quickly becoming as common on the Web as RSS and (in time) HTML. But it's still early enough in the game that the likes of ClearSpring and Snipperoo can carve out a hefty niche, much like RSS feed management a few years ago - where Feedburner, Newsgator and a couple of others came out trumps.
Brad's right that Feedburner has a great platform from which to supply widgets to consumers, so they may eventually have pole position here. But I'd like to think there's plenty of room for ClearSpring and a couple of other widget platforms to differentiate themselves - e.g. Feedburner's BuzzBoost is a great add-on widget service, but ClearSpring appears to offer a lot more functionality at present. What do you think of the widget platforms market?
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As Brad says there are 23 widdget management systems he must be drawing his definition of a widget management system so wide as to include anything that generates new widgets. While Widgetbox and Snipperoo are clearly widget management systems, Musestorm and Clearspring and Labpixies and Springwidgets et al are more accurately described as widget generation and distribution systems. We all exist in an ecosystem and we can all partner and relate to eachother and we all have something unique to contribute. Unless there are 22 stealth widget management systems out there that only Brad has come across?
I think Brad is using "23" as a fictional number to make a point. I do think the space is still in its infancy and 2007 will be an interesting year as widgets become more and more mainstream.
Most people I speak to still dont know what widgets are. I think vista will go a long way to educating the public (which will still take a while).
In the meantime I think there are several companies that can be successful if they can get the right content married which a great distribution strategy.
At yourminis.com we believe in portability of widgets. We enable you to use our widgets to build personalized start pages (public or private), embed individual widgets on your blog / myspace / personal site and in the near future run the same widgets on the desktop leveraging Adobe's Apollo platform.
Come check us out at www.yourminis.com
Ivan, thanks for that clarification. We are helping people get into the widget game. We are not focusing on end user services now like Snipperoo who is providing a Widget Management Service. Our position is to plug into Snipperoo, YourMinis, Google, and all the other great platforms out there. I think that over time things will start to settle out. I don't know exactly how things will work, but we are enjoying the ride.