Widgetbox

Widgetbox was a San Francisco, California based company that enabled businesses to create and deliver applications to their customers. Widgetbox formally discontinued their service on March 28, 2014.

Company typePrivately held companies

Founded2006

DefunctMarch 28, 2014

Faterebranded; original service shut down

Quick facts Company type, Founded ...

Widgetbox

Company type	Privately held companies
Founded	2006
Defunct	March 28, 2014 (2014-03-28)
Fate	rebranded; original service shut down
Successor	Flite
Headquarters	San Francisco , United States
Website	widgetbox.com

In February 2011, Widgetbox rebranded as Flite and focused on online and mobile advertising.

Products

Widgetbox products included:

Widgetbox Mobile

Enabled the user to build and distribute mobile web applications for iPhone and Android.

ClickTurn Real-time Rich Media Ads

The user could develop and run rich-media ads.

Widgets

Enable the user to aggregate content into a web widget.

History

Widgetbox was founded in 2006 by Ed Anuff, Giles Goodwin and Dean Moses.^[1] The company debuted the same year at DEMOfall 2006. Sequoia Capital and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners invested an undisclosed amount in the company in 2007.^[2]

A Series B round of funding was announced in January 2008, by Northgate Capital, Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, independent investor Michael Dearing, et al.^[3]

Recent updates

August 2007: Announced a distribution partnership with iTunes that allows users to create and publish widgets based on an iMix playlist.
September 2007: Launched an App Accelerator for Facebook, which enabled users to create a Facebook application based on one of their widgets.
November 2007: Announced support for Google's OpenSocial initiative.^[4] Added support for importing Google Gadgets.
December 2007: Participated in the launch of the Bebo Open Application Platform.
January 2008: released an App Accelerator for Bebo. Announced it raised an additional $8m in Series B funding.
March 2008: Will Price, a General Partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, becomes new CEO.
October 2008: Partnered with Yardbarker.
July 2009: Partnered with Blogger to allow people to turn their Blogger blog into a widget.
March 2011: Widgetbox renamed to Flite.^[5]
November 2013: Announced they were shutting down on 28 March 2014.
March 28, 2014: Shut down.

References

[1]
McCarthy, Megan. "Widgetbox Lands Funding, Looking for CEO". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2025-08-11.
[2]
Staff, PE Hub (2008-01-31). "Widgetbox Raises $8 Million". PE Hub. Retrieved 2025-08-11.
[3]
"Widgetbox Closes $8 Million in Series B Funding". PR Newswire Association LLC. UBM plc. 31 January 2008. Retrieved 5 October 2014. Widgetbox(TM) announced today it has closed its series B funding, raising $8 million from investors Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, NCD Investors, and private investor, Michael Dearing. The new funding will be used to build products and services for its large and growing community of developers and consumers including the expansion of DevShare(TM), the company's revenue sharing program with developers.
[4]
"The OpenSocial Doors are Now Open!". Widgetbox developer's documentation. Widgetbox. 2008. Archived from the original on February 12, 2008. Retrieved 5 October 2014. As promised during our OpenSocial Talk, we've OpenSocial-enabled your Widgetbox widgets. That's right! Any Widgetbox widget can now be installed to a supported OpenSocial container. Google is working hard to complete the OpenSocial APIs. We're working harder to learn their ins-and-outs and provide you the easiest way to unlock their power. This is exactly what we did with our App Accelerator for Facebook. And, we're doing it again for OpenSocial. We're here to make your widgets viral on OpenSocial so you can focus on what you do best – building great widgets.
[5]
Ha, Anthony (9 March 2011). "Widgetbox becomes "cloud" ad company Flite, raises $12M". VB News. VentureBeat. Retrieved 5 October 2014. It has been a year of big changes at startup Widgetbox, according to chief executive Will Price, and the company just announced a new name to reflect those changes — it's now called Flite. The idea is that Widgetbox is no longer focused on providing tools to build online widgets. Instead, it launched an ad-building product a year ago at the DEMO conference co-produced by VentureBeat, and Price said the ad side has been taking off. Price called Flite's technology "cloud-based advertising." Now, my kneejerk response was to roll my eyes (companies seem to slap the word "cloud" on to any concept nowadays), but Price argued that the there's a distinction between what Flite offers and your standard displaying advertising. Flite cloud ads don't just look good, they're also interactive and include features like the most up-to-date content from advertisers and integration with social networking tools.