Recently named one of Tech’s Best Entrepreneurs by BusinessWeek and also nominated for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Hooman Radfar - Founder & CEO of Clearspring Technologies - is speaking in mid-March a AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2008 East on how widgets are reshaping the Social Web.

"In November 2007 alone," notes Radfar, "81% of all Web surfers saw a widget on the Web, according to ComScore - that is 148 million people – about half of the U.S. population."

In short, 2007 was “the year of the widget.” 

These are not just ‘hit counters’ at the bottom of Web pages, either.

"New thinking has led to interactive, engaging online widget applications that can be re-posted or shared with a few mouse clicks. This has led to a revolutionary approach, where publishers are turning to widgets to reach a new audience – a group that embraces social networking and is just as likely to tell a friend about a cool new widget app as they are to talk about what they did last weekend," Radfar explains.

In his session, he says, he will show how publishers have created a direct channel to engage in continuous conversations with their audience, letting end users establish themselves as advocates for their favorite products, movies, TV shows and brands.

"This has led to a new generation of networking, where social networks, blogs, start pages and other Web portals are all swiftly converging towards a single architecture, called ‘social aggregation.’" says Radfar.

His session is just of the 90+ sessions, presentations, discussion panels, and keynotes that together make up the 3-day conference program of this month's 5th International AJAXWorld.

The March event features six content-rich tracks:

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