Widget Platform Saturation?

Over the last couple days I've just come to realize how many widget hosting & analytics companies there are right now. You've heard me mention a few of them that I've been working with recently, Widgetbox and Clearspring. Today I found yourminis, yesterday I found Springwidgets. Thats four services that all claim to do pretty much the same thing. I'm left wondering if there's room for all these in the widget space or if there's going to be a shake out and some will either be consumed or just fade away.

I read an article today on the blog by Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft's Emerging Business Team. He talks about the Remora Business Model, that he describes as these widgets riding the wave of popularity of MySpace, Facebook, etc. Well, thats exactly what I want to do, but the difficulty comes in figuring out how to monetize that.

Some hosts are buying up their "symbiots". MySpace bought Photobucket for $250,000,000 and MyBlogLog was bought by Yahoo for $10,000,000. Thats a lot of zeros for a widget. Someone thinks these widgets are worth it. I'll tell you this much, if a host offers me $10 mil you can be sure I'm taking it :p

I'm not sure why he thinks that widgets have no value. As a widget developer I spend lots of my time creating services that add value to a users experience on any given page. If it's something that plays well with other widgets and services out there, all of a sudden you've got a new and different ability that maybe didn't exist before.

The real question is, how much value? Charging a small fee to the user to subscribe to your widget might not be out of the question, if the price is right.