iWidgets Raises $4.1 Million For Social Syndication Platform

In an economic climate that isn’t ripe for funding, iWidgets, a social network syndication service, just raised $4.1 million in Series A funding from Opus Capital and University Venture Fund. The start-up previously received an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Opus Capital, Wilson Sonsini, and a few angel investors in June of 2007.

iWidgets, who lists CBS Interactive as one of its customers, drives traffic and interest for a client’s website by syndicating content and user activity to social networks and portals. For example, iWidgets could create series of widgets promoting and offering full content on CBS’s CSI Facebook page. iWidgets also provides a free self service widget creator on its site, so the masses can create their own widgets for their Facebook page.

iWidgets appears to have the competitive advantage over fellow widget producers. Sprout Builder recently discontinued its free widget service. Also, iWidgets’ applications don’t use Flash (many other widget creator do) making it easier to build a wide variety of widgets. And iWidgets’ WidgetWORA™ (Write Once Run Anywhere) technology customizes its widgets for specific destinations, “nativizing” widgets to they can take the look of social networks, including Facebook and MySpace.