• BoomTown, Monday, January 21, 2008 11:30 AM

Widget maker Slide made waves last week after a new investment round inflated the company's valuation to $550 million. The San Francisco-based startup, founded by PayPal alum Max Levchin, creates widgets, or Web-based software applications that can be embedded on user-controlled pages, like social networking profiles. Slide creates some of the most popular widgets on Facebook and MySpace.

Fidelity and T. Rowe Price have purchased a 9% stake in the company worth $50 million. Allen & Co., a NY-based Slide investor, helped raise the funds, but did not, conspicuously, add to their investment due to the "crazy" valuation. Slide's last round of funding-worth $20 million-took place in November 2006.

What we have here, the blog claims, is a bubble that is expanding at alarming rates; ground zero for this new era of irrational exuberance came when Microsoft pumped $240 million into Facebook, valuing the social network at $15 billion. Neither Facebook nor Slide have the kind of advertising revenue to justify their vast sums. Worse, it's not even clear that they can adequately monetize their vast and growing traffic.

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