They come in just about every size, shape and color and they are fast becoming one of the most common sights on the Web. That’s according to a company called Lijit, which develops widgets and recently released a study tracking their deployment.

Defined in the report as “any regularly occurring functionality on a website powered by an external service, voluntarily installed by the site owner and powered by Flash or Javascript”, most users know them as the little buttons that ask them to “add this”, “share this”, Tweet this or Like that. Social media widget adoption has soared by 80 percent in the past year, and those for Twitter and Facebook alone have nearly doubled — climbing from 6.96 percent overall usage to 11.86 percent.