Slide.com, the slideshows widget that I'm a massive fan of, has raised a third round of funding from Khosla Ventures and Mayfield Fund, with return investments from BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund. The last round was for $8 million, and although the value of this round isn't being disclosed, they've likely raised around $20 million in total - a large amount for a simple slideshow widget.
Slide lets you post slideshows on eBay, Piczo, Xanga, Friendster, hi5, Facebook, Blogger and elsewhere, but the simple fact is that most of these widget providers rely on MySpace for the majority of their traffic (I don't have Slide's stats, but I do have the stats of some similar services). Mashable Labs found that Slide accounted for 46% of the MySpace slideshows market back in September, with RockYou in second place and Imageshack, Filmloop, Photobucket and Slideroll also making appearances. MySpace Slideshows , the in-house slideshow tool from MySpace, hasn't yet caught up with Slide.com.
But Slide must also be concerned that MySpace will block them, as they have with other popular MySpace add-ons like VideoCodeZone, Stickam, Vidilife and more. Given that Slide.com founder Max Levchin is highly influential, and that a block would cause a huge uproar, it seems less likely that Slide will be nuked by MySpace. I expect they'll also continue to broaden the service and not be too reliant on feeding the beast.
[via VentureBeat]
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