Widgets make a big splash on the Net

SAN FRANCISCO -- For nearly a decade, GarageBand.com was the quintessential struggling Web company, barely hanging on as it burned through $17 million.

Until widgets.

Since it developed a widget, one of the mini-Web applications now flourishing on Facebook and other social-networking sites, the company — renamed iLike — has become an overnight sensation.

In May, iLike had 3 million registered users of its music website. After its widget became available on Facebook, it ballooned to more than 10 million users on Facebook, 15 million overall. And iLike is now growing to the tune of 3 million users per month.

"We've become as big the last few months as during the entire history of this company," says iLike CEO Ali Partovi, tracing the San Francisco-based company's origin to 1999.

Millions of Facebook and MySpace members share Partovi's newfound appreciation for widgets. No, not the mechanical devices spit out by factories, but thousands of mini-applications — be it a slide show or a virtual shout-out to a friend — that give social-network members a personal voice within their online community. A widget simply is a small software program that people can download and paste on their personal blogs or social-networking sites. The programs can be run repeatedly and shared with friends.

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Though most Americans wouldn't know a widget from a sprocket, widgets are all the rage on the Web. Marketers are thinking of ways to use them to sell ads, and venture capitalists are mulling investments in the hottest widget makers.

The stampede reached a roar this month, when market leader MySpace and Facebook expanded their services for targeted ads, including widgets designed by marketers. Google also opened a one-stop shop, called OpenSocial, for software developers to create tools that make it easier to share music, video and other personal interests on social networks.

Widgets run the gamut from the useful — comparing music and film tastes — to the inane — biting each other to become virtual zombies. A classic example is Renkoo, the producer of Booze Mail,which lets Facebook users send virtual tequila shots, hot chocolate and other beverages.