Yeah, me too. I don't work on widget stuff in particular, but anecdotally looking at Techcrunch earlier today (and again just now), the Like buttons appear a few seconds before the +1 buttons...
how soon something appears on the page doesn't necessarily mean it's better. blocking scripts / document.write and other "non-best practice" things may appear first on the page.
smart loading is not about showing first, especially in the context of widgets i.e. not the main content of the site.
