• D: All Things Digital, Thursday, June 5, 2008 11:30 AM

The question of whether there's a sustainable business model in creating and disseminating widgets on social networks hangs in the air, like the rest of social networking's market future. But Slide, Inc., one of the biggest widgetmakers, which recently fetched a (far-fetched) financing round valuing it at $500 million, sees a bright, ad-supported future for Super-Poking: Kara Swisher reports that the Silicon Valley company is now opening a New York City office. It also added a new director of ad sales, Jason Bitensky, who comes to Slide from his post as director of national sales at AOL Media Networks/Platform-A.

Until now, Swisher notes that Slide only had four sales people, all of them based in San Francisco. That says a lot about the nascent state of the widget advertising/sponsorship business. Swisher notes that ad buyers "are still using tiny 'innovation' budgets to test the space and have still not unlocked the treasure chests of big bucks that go to television."

As The Wall Street Journalpoints out, the third party apps market is already reaching a saturation point: "The push by application companies means more players are competing over what is a relatively small pie. In 2007, U.S. marketers spent $600 million advertising on social media, a sliver of the $18 billion spent on interactive advertising that year, according to Forrester Research." Of course, Forrester expects that number to surge to $6.9 billion by 2012, but where's the tipping point?

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