Just before the holidays, Newsweek published a much talked about article entitled, The year of the widget? But it was the question mark punctuating the title that really told the story. Taking a look at all of the discussion it generated, people were not really united about any one thing. What shall we call these things? Will there be consolidation among vendors, and for that matter, are any of the widget shops actually making money? Is this web 2.0? What is the true rate of adoption? And the list goes on...
It sounded a lot like the pre-chasm chatter we heard back when RSS started making news (again) 5 years ago (see Moore, Chrossing the Chasm). For that matter, what are the chances that you, reading this post, aren't an early adopter?
The biggest story about widgets is yet to be told. But we don't think it'll be this year, and we don't think it'll even be about widgets.
