• The Washington Post , Tuesday, April 10, 2007 11:01 AM

An old word used in economics textbooks has received a new Web 2.0 makeover: a "widget," no longer just a 20th-century product, now refers to a piece of branded micro-content that can easily be shared between consumers or embedded on a personal blog or social networking profile. The actual content could be anything from a video game to a sports highlight to a branded calculator.

A pair of companies from the D.C. suburbs are producing these branded products. "Advertisers are no longer wanting people to click on a link to buy something," said Haroon Mokhtarzada, the 27-year-old founder and chief executive of Freewebs, a company that makes online widgets. "Now, they're wanting people to engage in a neat product while they build brand equity."

It's too soon for widgets to turn a profit, though Clearspring, the other widget company profiled in the Post report, just received a fresh round of funding from former AOL bigwigs Ted Leonsis, Steve Case and Miles Gilburne, as well as Novak Biddle Venture Partners, of Bethesda, MD, bringing its total financing to $7.5 million. Says 25-year-old Clearspring founder Hooman Radfar: "The new role of companies is not to produce content and spoon-feed it to users. Their new role is to create tools people want and push them out so people can use them however they choose."

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