Netvibes will launch “Ginger” as a social widgets platform

Hi,

a few days ago I was the first to announce a Social networking twist from Netvibes and Tariq Krim, Netvibes' CEO and founder has just announced in the WEB2.0 conference in Berlin that Netvibes will launch a new released called ... "Ginger"and that release will be their social answer.

Netvibes, as reported by Mike Butcher of uk.techcrunch.com reporting live from Berlin, decided that it it was too late to go creating a new Social Network competing with Facebook, Opensocial and others, and has decided instead that " it was time Netvibes to tap into the existing social networks".

The idea is to mash Netvibe’s UWA widgets with social APIs like Google’s recently announced Open Social or the Facebook application platform.

Krim has declared : "We decided to re-engineer Netvibes around social services. When you see something on Netvibes and like it you can share it with friends on your public Netvibes timeline"

Watch here a demo of the new Ginger release (Quicktime).

The new Ginger release will present in the upper menu line a Friend icon that will call on your screen the icones of your friends and followers as in Twitter (like I had well guessed )

Among the new content offered, the demo shows a Weather's Friends widget.
I am quite sceptic for the use of such a widget but who knows...

Watch here a second demo of the Ginger release (Quicktime)
Here we can see another new icone on the upper menu line called : FLOW
By clicking on it , you will be able to check the activities of your friends on a timeline !!
You will have also a Private timeline and a public timeline. I guess that your public timeline will be the one available to your friends.
The Friends timeline is showing the activities of your friends: if they stared a link and which one, if they added a widget and which one, and so on...

On your personal timelines you will the same kind of informations.

I think that it is a good step for Netvibes, it gives a new dimension to your page even if you do not use as a social networking tool.

In the social networking field I think also that is the best move for Netvibes and it could provide a way to communicate between separated and closed social networking.

Netvibes could make people from Facebook and Myspace to meet in a single Netvibes page.

Just wait to see it from real !