Views as a Web Widget has the potential to revolutionize the Internet, now that I think about it. Taking a hint from Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion in The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites, we are entering a time where creating an API for embedding content within another site is becoming a standard way of sharing information.
The leading players on the web all see the train coming. They are wisely creating APIs and turning themselves into plug-and-play services, not just big destinations. YouTube is just the latest to do so today. Amazon has S3. Google has OpenSocial and an extensive library of APIs. As does Microsoft. Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site. Twitter is an API first and (eventually) a business model second. Finally, the booming widget economy shows the promise of small content that can go anywhere.
The Views as a Web Widget project is being proposed for Google’s 2008 Summer of Code. This project will allow an administrator to turn any view into a widget.
As I have experience with this, having implemented Views Slideshow (any view into a slideshow), Embedded Media Field (embedding external “widgets” from YouTube, Flickr, etc.), and a widget for Maplight, and am interested in being a mentor this year, I plan to offer to mentor that project, along with Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg.
Tim Berners-Lee spoke last week on the topic, saying that the semantic web will supersede the monolithic giants of Facebook and Google. As Dries recently indicated at his State of Drupal address in Boston, the Drupal of the future will be semantic web.
The Drupal of the Future will explode your site into a million pieces. And if your site can handle that, it will thrive in that multifaceted environment.