After doing some research, I realized there was a major flaw in my previous post regarding the potential of OpenSocial - the new standard will not allow member data to move between the various participating social networks. For now, the gardens will remain walled. Cattle? Safe!

So what this means is that if you build an app, you can plug it into any social network that participates in the OpenSocial standards, but not across multiple participating social networks.

W3 released a working draft for Widget standards recently.

Blame Pete Cashmore for distracting me with this news about "Widget Disruption":

Netvibes (a French Widget-based personal homempage service) is going to treat it's 10 million users to some new functionality, allowing them to post their Netvibes Widgets on popular social networking sites, blogs, etc.

Great quote from Tariq Krim, Netvibes' CEO:

Widgets are killing the Webpage. It is time to go to something else. We are entering the widget economy. We are going there no matter what.

First, an apology: like Seth Godin before me, I am learning the seductive power of continued riffing rather than taking the time to flesh out a new concept. So while bigger better ideas grow obsolete in unfinished txt files on my desktop, here's more on Widgets and the larger phenomenon of the disintegrating Internet.

If you're looking for quality content, skip this post.

Techcrunch points to an interesting Widgets overview on Yahoo's Widget blog.

I'll repeat the comment that I made on the Techcrunch blog to write that beyond all the hype, Widgets are still in their infancy, and engineers are still figuring out how to identify and leverage their strengths.

Well, the NYTimes finally ran an article on Widgets, so it's safe to say they're hitting mainstream.