If you want to create a simple widget in Orchard, such as a box of social links, you have three possibilities:

1. Find a module on the gallery or write one yourself, but there is overhead associated with modules, which may make this overkill.
2. Use an HTML widget and paste a bunch of HTML and Javascript, hoping administrators of the site don’t break it accidentally. I don’t like this, it feels like a hack.
3. Create a simple widget, following the instructions in this post.