Guide Note

Widget platform provider Clearspring Technologies offers tools to help web publishers and marketers make widgets of their content for use on other websites such as blogs and social networking sites. Clearspring also makes analytic tools available to widget creators, so they can track widget placement and views.

Fast Facts

1. Founded: January 2004
2. Founders: Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath
3. CEO: Hooman Radfar
4. Headquarters: McLean, Virginia
5. Funding: $36 million
6. More than 4 billion widgets on the Web
7. 126 million unique widget views per month

Clearspring was founded in 2004 by Carnegie Mellon University engineering students Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath. They received initial funding from their school's Pennsylvania Cyber Security Commercialization Initiative, and additional funding in 2006 and 2007 from Novak Biddle Ventures, Steve Case and Ted Leonsis. In 2008 they secured third round funding of $18 million dollars, bringing their total funding to date to $36 million.

• "No other widget company has the breadth of relationships with content publishers, advertisers, developers and social media, as well as the full suite of widget services including syndication, in-depth analytics and easy-to-use monetization tools,"—Harry Weller, New Enterprise Associates

• "Widgets are part of a broader disaggregation trend on the Web."—Hooman Radfar

• "Clearspring's tracking is statistics on steroids. The information about widget usage gets sliced and diced across each and every possible metric that you can imagine. It's a useful and powerful tool for understanding the audience and how it interacts with the widgets."—Alex Iskold, ReadWriteWeb