Yesterday, I posted about the thematic overlap of the Jaiku-Google deal and MySpace’s upcoming 3rd party developer platform. The analysis left me fidgety. And, when I’m fidgety, I ask more questions:

• Is this rapid shift toward open platforms and widget-mania resulting in thousands upon thousands of useless, hastily-hacked apps? [Okay, yes, but is there a germ of an idea somewhere in that mucky widgetpile that could actually change the way we live and compute?]

• Is this shift a burgeoning condition of web 2.0, or have we never grown out of the “Dancing Hamster Phase” of web 1.0, and we’re just now noticing the (widgety, microbloggy) shape of the new permutation?

OR

• Are we hesitant to assign any value to widgets because we too quickly deem them low-brow? Could the quickly expanding 3rd party developer space actually be a way out of the SN corporate mousetrap?

That said, I should bring to light another major SN player that’s part of the open platform party– following the example of Facebook, Linked In, and now MySpace. Welcome to the rager, Bebo.

Bebo has been “selectively open” for a while now, allowing a few hand-picked developers to exhibit their wares on Bebo Widgets; yet only since late-July have they jumped into this mosh pit. (Incidentally, they’re also rumored to be heading towards an IPO.)

Pete Cashman over on Mashable wonders what this means for revenue; I wonder what this means for end users.

There is a nugget of hope in this whole movement. Back in August, Facebook changed the way apps were ranked, based not only on number of users, but on how “engaging” they are – a move prodded by criticism that they were only highlighting popular, yet entirely useless, apps. This new method is still completely subjective, and doesn’t really solve anything, but at least it shows cognizance (on the end users part) that the Pick Ur Zit widget may be cool (for a second), but has no further resonance. In short, sticky is far from synonymous with useful.

So, does this simply leave us in a holding pattern? Not necessarily.

I’d be biased if I said the key to redemption in Widgetville (and ultimately culling out useful apps from the larger pile o’ bile) is some form of The Web Outside, but I’ll say it anyway. More specifically, bringing the most engaging apps into social places and making them part of the real world fabric can’t help but weed out the richest apps and weave them into our lives beyond our desks and dormrooms.

But, as I said, I’m biased… [see name of blog above]

[tags] the web outside, widgets, microblogging, bebo, myspace, facebook, 3rd party developer platform, open source[/tags]