Widgets unleashed

Eric Schonfeld talks with Netvibe's Tarik Krim about the widgetisation of the web. It's an in-depth and interesting post worth reading in full.

It got me thinking about widgets and identity.

Widgets promise to allow us to take individual pieces of functionality from myriad web services and reassemble them in the manner of our chosing.

Widgets allow us to magnetise to us all the bits of the web that we resonate with, be they windows on our own information or others', re-contextualising them according to our taste. In terms of identity, widgets allow us to make our own identity primary in the way we view, interact with and re-display information: the monolithic identity of the service provider becomes a secondary context for our web experience.

The Garden Walls are dissolving and reforming. It's an ongoing process that looks set to become ever richer and more fluid.