Every now and then something interesting comes around that people tend to gravitate towards and subsequently hold up as an example of how things should be done. There might not be a technical standardization process, though you could argue it's more of a manner of "acceptance".
Some examples of this: the Yellow Fade Technique from 37signals for Ajax in-page changes, using the Lightbox technique for showing a gallery of images, even banner ads started out non-standardized (and were subsequently standardized by the IAB). Ajax itself had its own humble origins which were then expanded upon by others when they found that it was a good idea.
I find this terribly interesting. The interesting part is when you pose the question, "Well, okay, how do I create something that becomes bigger than itself?" That's the million dollar question. Based on my own examples I mentioned above, none of them set out to become a standard practice. For 37signals in particular, they identified a problem and made a solution for themselves. Helpfulness is big. If you do something innovative, you have a lot better chance at gaining traction if you help people along by explaining how something is done or by just throwing the source code out there for people to expand upon.
I bring this up because of the new jQuery UI Library that just was released. One of their examples makes use of Apple's new concept of quickly skimming through a group of photos by sliding your mouse over it. Apple might not necessarily like it (I believe they have a number of patents on the concept), but at this point I'm not sure they could really stop it, at least on a website (on the software side it might be another issue). It's a pretty slick way of seeing photos at a glance. It might be the next pseudo-standard out there if enough people make use of it.