You had to know this was going to change; it just screamed “blindly milking the web 2.0 fad.” On Monday, iWidgets is announcing it’s trading in its name for something a little more adult: “Transpond.” And the fact is, while what the company is doing might be trendy, it’s not the flash in the pan its original name projected.
Though Transpond sounds a little air-traffic-control at first hearing, the name matches what the San Francisco startup wants to do: send and extend content. Transpond makes applications for social networks, and alongside the name change, it’s also announcing support for the Palm Pre and, coming later this summer, the iPhone.
The draw of the company’s web-based software is that media publishers can easily build applications that are automatically customized for the growing array of platforms on the web and phones. It distributes video as well as features like polls, quizzes and games meant to engage users. Transpond calls its tools “Write Once Engage Everywhere.”
Transpond isn’t putting a new coat of paint on an unused product. Rather, it has had legit customers for much of its existence. Its first client was CBS, and it later added Revision3. Today it’s announcing Lifetime and CNN are customers as well. Transpond raised a $4.1 million Series A round from Opus Capital and University Venture Fund in February. The company hasn’t proved that its method of content distribution is the next big thing, but it’s off to a good start.
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