PostApp Announces Private Beta of Web Widget Marketplace

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Friday, June 23, 2006; 07:09 AM

PostApp (http://postapp.com/), a new commercial web technology company, announced that it has received $1.5M in Series A funding from leading venture firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.  Mitchell Kertzman, a partner with Hummer Winblad has joined the board. The funds will be used to pioneer a new type of marketplace for web-based widgets, called Widgetbox, that enables the placement of  many types of applications, functionality and content into blogs, personal homepages, social networking sites, and auction pages. The company also announced the immediate availability of the Widgetbox private beta at www.widgetbox.com

A web widget is a piece of web service-based interactive content that can be dynamically embedded into a web page.  For example, a web widget can be a game, a score box displaying a set of statistics, a weather box, an advertising box or any other functionality to be embedded on a web page such as a blog, personal homepage, social networking profile, or auction page. Web widgets, sometimes called gadgets or modules, are increasingly used by web publishers to enhance their web pages, and web service developers are now frequently making their technologies available as web widgets.   Many different technologies can be used to develop widgets:  HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, Java Applets, and any web application platform:  J2EE, LAMP, Perl, Ruby, etc.

PostApp is creating a marketplace that connects web widget developers with bloggers and other personal publishers.    Widget developers include online services seeking widespread widget distribution such as Yahoo! and eBay, as well as small independent widget developers.

PostApp offers innovative technology to ease the pain of widget management including the  Widgetizer Engine™, a powerful but simple tool that lets you turn anything on the web into a widget, as well as tools that make it easier for bloggers to control their widgets quickly and intuitively.

“PostApp’s mission is to give everyone the power to assemble, share and integrate the best of the web,” said Ed Anuff, president and CEO of  PostApp. “We deliver a powerful syndication platform that serves the analytic requirements of large web widget distributors and the ease of use so that non-technical web users can easily incorporate widget functionality into their sites.”

“With the growth of user-generated content the web is rapidly turning into a powerful applications platform. These small component-like applications, called widgets, deliver everything from advertising functionality to games to statistics and beyond. We increasingly see a world where there will be tremendous value in the creation, syndication and tracking of these widgets,” said Mitchell Kertzman, partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.