What makes Facebook so addictive isn’t just the networking and hooking up with old friends. Part of the magic lies in the mini-applications or widgets it allows you to install on your page. Allowing users this extra bit of customization is one of the key reasons why Facebook simply exploded in popularity this year.

What is lacking though is a powerful search feature to ensure you find the most relevant app or widget quickly - This is where CleverHippo comes in. CleverHippo is the best effort I’ve seen thus far in terms searching widgets.

At its core - It allows you to

* Search by popularity, relevance, and how new the widget is
* Vote a widget up or down depending on how much you like it

…which is good, but what really makes it stand out is the ability to

* Refine the search using filters. For example, you can add ‘NOT’ & ‘OR’ into the search terms to tell it what exactly you want to include and exclude from the results
* Search across multiple platforms. With this one search engine, you can expand any search into various platforms and look for widgets on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, iGoogle, iPhone, Mac OSX, and so much more.
* Track widgets search results by RSS. For example, let’s say you want to keep tabs on ‘music widgets’ - you can subscribe to CleverHippo’s feed on ‘music widgets’ to track that space.

All in all - this site is definitely my one stop choice for widgets