As ze frank says, “we have sa, sa, sa, sa, sa, something from the comments!”

Although a couple of you might actually go back and read stuff from the comments, I thought it would be valuable to copy/paste a couple comments here also.

In response to Fred Wilson’s original post Social Widgets, Gordon Gould’s blog post exploding badges- social widgets & peer production, and my post Standardizing the Widgetsphere, Ivan wrote the following two comments:

And, having read Gordon Gould’s excellent posting (exploding badges- social widgets & peer production) that he links to above, I’d quote this from him:
‘This is no small feat. The potential to confuse the hell out of the regular user w/an over-wrought badge is a real concern. Badges are already a big leap for the average user. I am sure that all us Web 2.0 companies can figure out ways to truly baffle the mainstream w/our badges which is good for no one. ‘
Bingo – Gordon, get in touch. We can work together.

and then Ivan also wrote the following comment:

OK, I’m going to try a third comment, this subject is so close to my heart.
I re-read Tim’s post, viz: ” Why don’t the widgets/badges I have on my blog work like that? Why can’t I click “add” on a ThisNext badge I see somewhere on the Internet and have the item I like immediately on my badge? … we need to get there for this widget/badge thing to really take off….” Fred’s right. It does none of us any good for there to be dozens of little niche social networks (i.e. walled gardens). Rather, we need a decentralized but standardized widget/badge model. Perhaps, we hope, that’s what Ivan Pope has up his sleave with Snipperoo.com?’ And, umm, yes, we totally agree, no walled gardens, a Universal Widget (that’s our trademark). And tools within widgets that allow you to add, grab, install with one click. My earlier point was – we just won’t try to impose any sort of standardised model to achieve this. Am I making myself clear? Probably not!

Thank you Ivan. Anybody else have any thoughts on Fred’s original post? Please check-out Charlie O’Donnell’s excellent blog post titled Fasttrack to my Sidebar in which he offers a possible answer to Fred’s question.