Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

The Centre Cannot Hold... The words of William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

Everything is crazy at the moment, which is as it should be. It's not so much widgets as the places that widgets go to and interactions between those places. Facebook, MySpace, Google, a titanic battle seems to be taking place - and a lot of commentators have the opinion that it is win or lose for the giant players. I think something else is happening - the realisation that there is no centre. Nothing in the social online world will have enough gravity to pull everything else in its direction. No Saturn, just plenty of Earths. Look at Google - it doesn't even have any skin in the game, it doesn't have a social network to play against the others, but it knows that tools to push and connect networks is what this is really about. Everything else is just features. And widgets are the carriers, the neutral players in this crazy mixed up space. Everybody references the humble widget as a part of the picture. I've been preaching it for years now - fragment your content and allow it to find its own way in the world. You can't hold it to the centre - the centre cannot hold. It's mere anarchy now. Enjoy.