Make-your-own content widget company iWidgets raises $4.1M
IWidgets is trying to help media companies (and anyone else) easily distribute videos and other content through embeddable widgets on social networks. Although there are many create-your-own widget services these days, the company has worked to differentiate itself by integrating widgets into social networking features such as news feeds on Facebook. The company has done well enough that its seed backer, Opus Capital, has led a first round of $4.1 million in venture funding in it, alongside University Venture Capital.
The San Francisco company has been making money through syndicating professional video content, among other methods. In September it began syndicating clips of CBS shows in MySpace; iWidgets gets paid when users click on ads that appear before or after a video within an embed. Rivals in the advanced DIY widget-making business include Splash and Sproutcast, but both have moved towards for-pay models, as the blog Sexy Widget notes.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.
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