Comments on: Talking Netvibes

By: Tom Lee

Tom Lee — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:58:16 +0000

I still will continue to use Netvibes, no need to change when it is working well.

By: Who Will Control Advertising on the Web? - GigaOM

Who Will Control Advertising on the Web? - GigaOM — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:29:37 +0000

[...] one of the reasons AOL’s purchase of Goowy, a personalized portal company and widget maker, caught my eye. Any exit is good news when it comes [...]

By: Brenda

Brenda — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 14:30:15 +0000

There are AJAX startpages abound out there. But there is something to be said for user-friendliness. And while My Yahoo! gives me everything I need on a daily basis, I’ve found that Netvibes is worth all the Web 2.0 jabber. It works, plain and simple. I find it nice-looking and reliable…consistantly.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 05 May 2006 23:26:41 +0000

Has anyone tried out (Yoosi.com). It appears you can easily create and add content with a URL. I like other services but – yoosi.com – you don’t need an API.

By: Camaracut

Camaracut — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:24:04 +0000

Hello Mr Malik,
You mentioned just about every start page (seen in your performance graph) that are more or less clones of each other, but not a mention of the most customizable of them all i.e.Protopage. Are you saving your fire for another article or turning a blind eye?

By: VeerChand Bothra

VeerChand Bothra — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 08:57:00 +0000

Netvibes, Pageflakes etc. are personal aggregators - you start with an empty plate and need to know what goes into it. The quality of feeds you choose is limited by your knowledge of online sources.

We at MyToday, have created a new category of RSS aggregators - which we call "Public Aggregators". In public aggregators like MyToday, the subject matter experts make the initial choice for you and give you a full plate. You can then choose to remove some or add some. This way, a layman can get started reading quality stuff. Have explained the idea in more detail on my blog.

By: Ted Power

Ted Power — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 08:10:53 +0000

This web desktop thing is really heating up. I think I have a slightly different take on it. My thoughts are here:

http://dip.lodoc.us/articles/2006/03/18/web-desktop-the-next-big-internet-tool

By: Akash Agarwal

Akash Agarwal — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:20:29 +0000

I believe netvibes and other such Ajax desktop technology demostrates a very important change that is happening in the market which is largerly driven by the need for personalization.

The market is moving from

Browser --> Search ---> Subscribe model

where all the information will be delivered as a channel/service and the gateway that deliver this will become very important.

Monetizing and building a business along the way for such companies clearly is going to be challenge.

By: George Zachary / Charles River Ventures

George Zachary / Charles River Ventures — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 22:58:46 +0000

I think Saul Weiner’s comments are right on target and as a venture investor think it is very exciting.

By: Markus

Markus — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 16:31:26 +0000

OM,

Ranking.websearch.com only reports on the top 100,000 sites. Either they are filtering out all the people visiting the site with less then 1 pageview or netvibes just doesn't have enough traffic to register on their system.

By: Christoph Janz

Christoph Janz — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 16:22:30 +0000

@Thomas:
Since our Beta Release about 6 weeks ago, we almost tripled the number of modules on our site to almost 40 (see http://www2.pageflakes.com/flakegallery/all.html). Among them are several applications which you won’t find anywhere else. More importantly, extrapolate these 6 weeks into the next years, and it will be difficult for the GYM to keep up with that dynamic.

By: Florent V.

Florent V. — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 15:19:21 +0000

@ ThomasLee :
There is no big difference. I like Netvibes better because of its look-and-feel.
And I’m glad there are different similar services for us to be able to choose from.

By: ThomasLee

ThomasLee — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 12:27:42 +0000

Hi Om,

I vistied Netvibes and don't really see any difference with they offer to the user than Google cureently does with their personalized homepage options.

Through Google and others I can add nearly everything that Netvibes does to my current Google homepage.

What am I missing?

By: Axel Wolf

Axel Wolf — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 10:45:28 +0000

I would agree with Will and Christoph here; the “1 million users” figure is rather misleading because everyone who drops by and gets his cookie is counted as a user. Spread over the lifetime of netvibes (roughly 1 year) this would come down to about 100,000 uniques per month on average which sounds reasonable; at Fold we had about 110,000 uniques so far this month, largely thanks to a Digg frontpage posting.

Speaking on startpages as such, I would argue that the best chances lie with those who are extensible in a way that they become more than mere online RSS readers. This can happen by way of an API for writing extensions in JS or the like or by embedding already existing applications or services.

For example, with Fold you can use Flash containers to add arbitrary Flash content (applications, utilities, games etc.) to a page. Using HTML containers one can even integrate a fully fledged word processor into a page with only three lines of HTML code as outlined here:

http://foldblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/using-ajaxwrite-in-fold.html

Startpages are still in a very early stage, it will be exciting to see how the concept evolves over the next 6-12 months.

By: Dan Warne

Dan Warne — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 08:46:27 +0000

What I don’t get is how Netvibes is in any way new or fundamentally unique compared to say, Google Personalised. You can add units of info to Google Personalised and not just the ones supplied by Google — there’s a bunch of third party modules in a Google-provided directory.

By: Christoph Janz

Christoph Janz — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 01:10:57 +0000

Happy to read about AJAX desktops here, Om. Of course I agree with Saul that you are severely underestimating the importance of AJAX desktops, though. Sure, currently Netvibes and Pageflakes are mainly used by early-adopters. Just like Yahoo back in 1997, I think there's nothing wrong with that.

What you're seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg. Again, just like Yahoo back in 1997. As more and more services are opened up with APIs and as more and more content is being syndicated, these offerings will become more and more attractive for mainstream users.

It won't take too long until there will be a (secure) RSS feed for your online bank account, and the most convenient way to keep track of your current balance will be…your personal startpage (which already aggregates the 50 other services and feeds that you use). New functionalities like this will make a site like Pageflakes irresistibly useful for mainstream users.

I'm totally biased, of course, but I'm truly convinced that it's just a question of time until every Internet user has his or her own personalized startpage.

As for the metrics, the commentator who explained why the "1 million Netvibes homepages" statement is extremely misleading is correct. No offense Tariq, just for the sake of correctness. :)