Slide largest widget maker on the Web?

May 10, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

slide.jpgSlide, the maker of a Web slide show feature, has emerged as a major player, boasting 150 million daily slide show views and more than 200,000 new slide show “widgets” created daily.

These numbers are astonishing, and are enough to make it the largest “independent” widget company on the web, according to the company. It is a striking example of how quickly you can grow if you have a good, simple idea. Slide, founded in 2005, first hit our radar barely a year ago. While all companies are the product of team efforts, Slide chief executive Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, has the reputation of a relentless workaholic.

Slide is one of the best-funded photo-related Web 2.0 companies in Silicon Valley (see our coverage), having raised up to $28 (we haven’t confirmed exact amount) at a reported value of more than $60 million.

Slide gives you a way to push slideshows, onto your blog for example, or to share your favorite photos with friends and family. But it also lets you pull them, accepting a slideshow of images fed from your friends or from your favorite Web sites.

In other news, Slide said its Guestbook, SkinFlix and ThemePics widget features are all doing well, and approaching the same scale of its basic Slide Show widget in terms of views.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Ro
    As a point of clarification, RockYou has more than 150MM views a day and more than 200K flash-based widgets embedded a day. This apparently would (also) make us the largest widget company on the web.
  • reader-beware
    A sign of a bubble is when journalists act as mouth pieces for the hype fed by startups with nary a questions. I'm surprised (should I be?) that Matt doesn't make any effort to decipher the numbers. For instance, ask this question: how many of those 200K widgets created are people just testing out the site and then walking away. This is where the hype lies. Sad to see bloggers swallow hook line and sinker.
  • Why this company needs of as much money ? I can't understand this bubble . Whats the business model ? Someone explain please ...
  • anon
    Or ask if the slideshow views are passive from simply visiting a MySpace page with an embed.
  • Good questions. Dan Kaplan has just done a harder hitting follow up:

    http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/15/rockyou-says-...
  • Microsoft should buy Slide and learn from Levchin.