Cross Widget Platform Compatibility

Interesting article has just been posted on TechCrunch titled "Netvibes Promises Cross-Platform Widget Compatibility". The widget marketplace is quickly becoming the hot topic for 2007, and the fact that there is a multitude of widgets that run on various platforms, it is easy to see that this is a fragmented space. There are already a few companies out there that are attempting to overcome this fragmentation, to mention a few: ClearSpring, and WidgetBox and now it seems that Netvibes is throwing it's hat into the ring as well. This is an interesting play, considering that Netvibes is one of the platforms that widgets run on. They do have a pretty slick product right now, but to my knowledge, all of the widgets they have available on their site do not run on any other platforms.
The W3C is apparently working on a draft for a universal widget specification, but I wonder if the Netvibes spec will become the standard by default? Nonetheless, this should shape up to be an interesting space and I hope that a standard is settled on so we can take our widgets where ever we want!