Some of the contact stuff they did in WebOS with Synergy is actually very much ahead of it's time. Android had now caught up to it a bit with ICS and their "People" card.
There's also a fairly large "homebrew" community for WebOS with lots of hacks, etc.
It was ahead of its time. Windows Phone picked up where WebOS left off on that measure, and did it quite well. They also grabbed the cards feature and put it to use (though without real-time multitasking).
All the features that should have made WebOS the best-selling platform ever have now been incorporated into the competing products. The fact that Windows Phone is basically WebOS with the homebrew taken out but is still lagging far behind in sales goes a long way towards showing that features matter much less than advertising and hype.
