I forgot to blog about this yesterday, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that one of our friends in the widget space, Lijit, closed a C series round on Monday of $7 million.  Lijit, which is on this blog (on the upper right side bar under "search") is a powerful search widget that can be placed on individual blogs (like ours) or online publishing networks. For example, from Lijit's analytics data, I can tell you neat facts like that visitors have come to this blog 284 times by searching the key words "olympics widget." 

Lijit has shown that it allows site visitors to enhance their experience on the site based on search topics, in turn generating more traffic (and potentially revenue) for the blog publisher. We're a big fan of Lijit here, and we're told that the additional funds they've raised will allow them to monetize most, if not all of their search widgets, and also permit them to launch their own ad network.  The company will also grow in size so that no products can be developed.

On a more personal note, I am friends with Lijit's Community Manager counterpart, Tara Anderson, who also runs Lijit's blog. (You can also see her personal site here.)  Why am I mentioning this?  Tara and I are in the initial stages of planning a Widget workshop in the Denver/Boulder area sometime this fall.  If you have ideas you'd like to share with us on possible workshop topics, or like to be involved, please leave us a note in the comments section.

Congrats, again to Lijit!