basically, we all have dozens if not hundreds of vendors relationships. Think of all the user accounts you have online and all the plastic cards in your wallet for membership and discount programs.

Facebook should offer an area where people can safely copy/paste private widgets generated at their user account pages with these various vendors. You would then have a widget for jetBlue, for instance, with all your private date. Another for your Barnes & Noble account.

With these widgets all safely “living” on a secure html page you could then do two very important things with them.

1. Export those that you needed to your iPhone (or other smart phone). With a barcode embedded those widget “cards” could then by used in “real life” when you checked-n a Hertz or bought coffee at Starbucks. Your iPhone screen could be scanned to pick-up the barcode (which would be part of the original widget).

2. You could share publicly (like Facebook Pages or Groups) those vendor relationships which you wanted. This would be a way to create a public persona for yourself by associating with certain “vendors.” Perhaps you would make public your relationship with the Sierra Club or perhaps with your favorite author?

It is with this second application that Facebook may ultimately find a huge revenue stream. vendors would pay Facebook to have official widgets offered to Facebook users. The great thing about these social ID widgets is that you could then “voyeur” your Facebook friends through a “widget search” to cross compare what products your friends used and thus, implicit endorsed.

I put forth this vision in 2007 but I’m still waiting for the widget world to implement it. Stay tuned.