Netvibes, the Paris-based personalized page start-up, which till recently had to co-CEOs, Tariq Krim (also the founder) and Pierre Chappaz, now has one less CEO. Chappaz is leaving Netvibes and instead will be focusing on Wikio, his personalized blog and news search service Wiki-related start-up that is now said to have two million unique visitors a month.
In a blog post announcing his decision, Chappaz hints at some long standing disagreements with Krim about the future of Netvibes.
The buzz around the service in the blogs and in the media was impressive. Tariq presented the whole of his original vision for Netvibes …a vision that seduced many, myself first.Strategies of distribution and monetization are the two points of disagreement between Tariq and I. We have a different vision of the evolution of Netvibes Universes.. It’s of no use to expose these kind of details in public..
Netvibes, and other personalized page start-ups are entering a tenuous phase, where they face not only increased competition from each other, but also face increasingly energized large companies, that are preparing their one personalized page offerings.
AOL, for instance is introducing MyAOL, that in early testing by us proved to be more than impressive. Google is using cash to attract developers to its iGoogle platform, raising the stakes even higher. With such fierce competition looming, Krim and Netvibes will have to battle hard to keep attracting new users. Netvibes has raised over $15 million in venture investments from the likes of Accel Partners and Index Ventures
PS: I will see Krim later this week in San Francisco, and will have an update at that point.
7 trackbacks so far
6:47 PM PT
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7:45 PM PT
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8:45 AM PT
[...] To truly advance take any web company to the next level, upper management must have similar visions. This is probably why PageFlakes (Netvibes’ competitor) appointed Dan Cohen, Yahoo!’s former Head of My Yahoo![4] [...]
11:21 AM PT
[...] here: Netviber ExperienceGiga OmFred Destin - a VC in EuropePierre Chappaz’s Kelblog (translated into [...]
1:52 PM PT
[...] France’s Web 2.0 heavyweight Netvibes made headlines this month for a different reason: co-CEO Pierre Chappaz left the company after disagreement over how to evolve Netvibes’ business model. The challenge: to gain an edge [...]
11:11 PM PT
[...] What’s worse, if you don’t decide who is ultimately responsible for the direction of the company it could cause a rift. [...]
6:32 PM PT
[...] closest rival is Netvibes, a Paris based company that has had it own set of challenges. Of course, the real competitors for these personalized web page start-ups are the Internet [...]
12 comments so far
9:44 AM PT
I hope their plan to unleash the Universes still goes forward. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to curate my own public Netvibes page and share it with my friends. It seems like this will be a great way to popularize such a great resource.
10:12 AM PT
“which till recently had [to] co-CEOs”
Just call me a co-editor :)
I dunno about Wikio… their Alexa stats show a flat-lined (or slightly declining) visitation rate. Leaving an established startup might be somewhat risky, although I’m sure part of it has to do with “co-CEOs” - did they both have to report to each other, and who did the lower level management report to? One, or both?
Sounds a little complicated…
11:47 AM PT
I am somewhat suspect of personalized pages as businesses. This is not because I don’t find them interesting, or cool. I do have a Pageflakes page. Problem is twofold:
I still have MyYahoo, iGoogle, and now Pageflakes as well. I don’t want to give up my registration, plus a little nostalgic towards my original MyYahoo page.
I’m not clear on where the revenue comes from these “businesses”. I see high churn, limited page views, and lack of stickiness in general as problems. I can’t see how VC’s will get a substantial return on their investments.
Just my $.02.
1:29 PM PT
Curtis, i agree with your first concern, user acquistion is a big problem for this startpage companies as there is no viral growth component in this business. The only way to acquire users (beyond the geek crowd) is to partner with ISP’s or OEM’s and thats sure going to be very expensive.
But your second concern (monetization) is a no brainer. Being a internet gateway/tollgate is a very profitable business, a simple search partnership alone can yield north of $20 CPM’s.
2:45 PM PT
Yeah, don’t forget Bubbletop goes live very soon. A beta invite is in your mailbox, Om.
Everyone else: let me know if you want a pre-launch beta invite account.
3:22 PM PT
@Mike - the Universe feature has been delayed for a long time. As far as I know Pageflakes and YourMinis had that feature since 2006. You might want to check that out. And yes, I am a Pageflakes user so of course I am biased.
Sarah
10:41 PM PT
Yes, Protopage, a Netvibes competitor, has had this feature since 2006 as well (link)
11:09 PM PT
One last word about us: Wewbag Mobile shows that one of the next frontier is the widget synchronisation between a personalizable page and its real widgets on mobile. (www.webwag.com/mobile)
3:53 AM PT
We also need experienced individuals from the web1 days to really help web2 grow into fully sustainable businesses. It’s great having a brilliant product, technology, and vision - but ultimately at some point they need to make the revenue.
I’ve spoken about my time briefly with Pierre at Kelkoo:
(link)
6:54 AM PT
Hi,
I wanted to add that: “Also Marc THOUVENIN, Business Development Exec. quits Netvibes”
more on:
(link)
11:21 AM PT
@Gopi,
Your make a good point except a lack of audience puts heavy downward pressure on CPM’s. My points are tied together, so what you refer to as a no brainer isn’t a no brainer. This likely explains the departures and disagreements on monetization strategy.
12:06 PM PT
There are many sites out there like netvibes very impressive but I don’t know how do they make revenue out of this are we near dotcom bubble 2.0 burst??
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