Widgets in the News

Lots of tidbits in the widget and application space lately. Here’s a recap:

ShareThis gets $15 million: A new VC round brings $15 million to the widget maker. (News.com)

Will Price joins Widgetbox: The Hummer Winblad general partner and Widgetbox investor will be CEO of the company. In his open letter posted on TechCrunch, Price (sounding as grandiose as Mark Zuckerberg did when he unveiled Facebook’s SocialAds concept last November) says: “The best markets and the best companies ride the tide of history. Widgets are such a market.” I could do a lot with that tide analogy but this Thai proverb seems most apt: “At high tide fish eat ants; at low tide ants eat fish.”

March Madness apps: The Chicago Tribune reports that there are an incredible 20,000 March Madness pools operating on Facebook. One Facebook application, from tournament broadcaster CBS Sports, lets friends create their own brackets and compare them with others. It’s not gambling, since there’s no payout, but because it allows people to create brackets, some think the app provides an assist, to coin a term. Promoting online gambling was “not our intent with the application,” LeslieAnne Wade, a senior vice president at CBS, told the Chicago Tribune.