The Next Net: 2007: The Web Widget

Sippey, thanks so much for finding this snippet of insight (see link and quote below). This whole idea of widgets, bookmarklets, badges and such has been near and dear to me for some time now.

Over the past year and a half, at least, I have been working myself along this line of thought, picking up tidbits from various areas – Fabio Sergio giving me the name I use to describe this (‘morsels’, from a presentation of his), talks with Dave from WINKsite (some relevant stuff I wrote here and here), great stuff from Rich McManus (my summary article here) and Marc Canter (some relevant posts of mine here and here), and playing with Netvibes, Google Personal, Widsets, and so on.

Indeed, on and off over this time period, I have been trying to actually ‘do’ something about it (and there are many reasons for nothing happening). I think this ‘splintering’ or ‘morselization’ of the Web is well-suited for the mobile lifestyle – snippets delivered in mobile-savvy sizes in mobile-savvy appropriateness.

Yeah, this whole thing gets me shiverin’ in excitement and I’ve been able to meet some kindred souls here at work who, without my prompting, revealed that they also see this trend, it’s relevance to the future of the Web, and its role in the fusion of mobile and Web and desktop.

Maybe, together, we can actually make something happen.

🙂

Link [via Sippey]: The Next Net: 2007: The Web Widget.

The reason Web widgets are important is because they are the most concrete manifestation of something else that is happening.  The Web is splintering.  Centralized portals don’t matter anymore in an era when Google and Digg will filter the ever-changing Web for you much more efficiently.  Or you can filter  it yourself with a few well-chosen widgets, and bring it to your own particular corner of the Web.