Slide: The $500 Million Widget

When Max Levchin started Slide, the popular tool that lets users create slide shows and other bling for social network pages, it wasn't because he felt passionately that photos needed to be surrounded by animated hearts and glitter. It was because Levchin, who co-founded and later sold PayPal, wanted to prove he could do it again-this time, generating more than the $1.5 billion PayPal fetched from eBay (EBAY) in 2002. As of Jan. 14, Levchin was about one-third of his way to his goal-at least on paper.

Last word: Widgets, those fantastic self-contained applications are sprouting up all over the web, and are giving marketers new opportunities to connect with consumers. Branded widgets can be a powerful tool with meaningful scale, when executed properly. Slide.com is one good example of what is to be an area of explosive growth in 2008.

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