How to place a Widgtet in the Popular Search of Netvibes' Ecosystem

Hi,

The Netvibes' Developers Blog has published their "guidelines" to conceive a popular widget and this post completes a comment I made there.

A new widget to ensure maximum popularity, should fits more that one quality; one is good, two is great, three takes the cake. Four is unheard of yet, and five wins you something:

1. Useful / Needed

2. Pretty / Cool / Personalizable

3. Timely

4. Viral

5. Local

Then they give also this advice about the positioning of Widgets in the Netvibes Ecosystem :

".. each widget category is sorted by popularity by default, with two others sorts being available (most recent, and Premium Widget, which is a special type of widget, created by Netvibes). So, since you cannot rely too much on the novelty of your widget - or the lack thereof, since new ones come every day -, your aim as a developer is to keep your widget as high as possible in the popularity scale."

But How to bring a Widget to the Top of the popularity scale ?

Look at this widget (not mine ): ALL MY GOOGLE SERVICES
it is very good. Perhaps the best in his category as I posted yesterday.

Now, it is competing with “old” widgets. If I search Google in the Ecosystem (http://eco.netvibes.com/search?q=google) the Top 3 have more than 20.000 downloads… The AllMyGoogle with 435 will never be able to recover to see the sky ...

The MOST POPULAR SEARCH should work for comparable time laps...

Then, POPULAR is not well mesured by DOWNLOADED or INSTALLS.
I myself downloaded a lot and deleted also a lot since then.

Good Mesure would be: IN USE or even USED in the last … days.
Even BEST RATED could be more helpfull then just downloaded.

In the end, The ECOSYSTEM Search, as it is now, is just reinforcing old Widgets giving no visibility to new widgets.

That way it prevents Netvibes users to access to them and in consequence that could lead for them to a “less good” experience…

On the other hand, as written by GigaOm, that would give space for an AdSense model that allows widget makers to pay to place their widget more prominently on the Netvibes site.

So, Widget Producers will have to pay for better placement (good for revenues) but the Search result will not be better for Netvibes’ users (bad for users) !

It is the Altavista/Yahoo search model (pay just for presence) against the Google one (pay to be near pertinence).

We know the winner...

Netvibes is finally looking for more local content

Hi,

I already wrote a few posts on the need for Netvibes to get more Content, and especially Local Content, the one related to the place you live and work.

And it seems that Netvibes has just decided to go alos that direction.

In a recent post in the Netvibes Developers' Blog, they wrote:

"... that local content is as important to us as is global content - and it’s even the primary reason behind UWA and Ecosystem: to let developers build widget for local services, to let users submit local feeds and data, and have all these local items be available to all Netvibes users."

"So build local widgets and submit them to Ecosystem: local items are just as important as global ones, and everyone wants local informations coming directly to their desktop! That’s what UWA is for, and we hope to some cool widgets land on future updates of Netvibes’ local start-pages. Let’s build the long tail of widgets!"

The big problem is the search of the Ecosystem Directory that is not as efficient as a similar search with Google.

If I want to find my own tab: LONDON (UK) in the Netvibes Ecosystem

1) I can search the Ecosystem with its own search : http://eco.netvibes.com/search?q=LONDON+UK , and I will found it in the second page because of the small number of downloads (but in results with a better download rate there is BEEF BAGEL ??!!). If I prefer I can choose the "most recent" but then again as it is not a new widget, mine will not show up. So, it will be difficult for a new widget to show up in the first page if only downloads is requested.

2) I can search the Ecosystem with a selective search by GOOGLE:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aeco.netvibes.com+LONDON+UK&btnG=Search
and bang! It is the first result! Impressive.

That is for searching a specific item but the problem remains with a generic search.

NEW USER TAB: to help you start your Netvibes page if you are a new user

Hi,

If you are a "New User" and you would like to start using Netvibes, the first screen offerd at the moment by Netvibes is, as I already posted, so poor ...

So I prepared and published a tab, the NEW USER TAB that could be used as a starting point to build a "good" starting page for Netvibes new users.

The idea is that Netvibes should ask the new user something like :
"Please set your location to receive local news, blog feeds, weather and more "

As it is not exisitng at the moment, in my tab, I have done it by hand.
For starting the discussion I choose : DUBLIN and IRELAND but it would work for any other location.

The Tab presents what could be a new "new user tab" for Netvibes with:

a Weather widget (already existing)
some local news blogs (already existing) that I choosed from Netvibes Local content : Ireland
the email wizard widget (already existing)
the Ebay widget (already existing)
a map search (already existing)
the Ecosystem search widget (already existing)
and many searches widgets set on DUBLIN and the same set on IRELAND

The searches on the Location with the instruction on how to get the FEEDS directly on his new page should "inspire" the new user offering a choice of sources. The best selection is made, according to me, by Google.

That way, with the addition of a short Webnote to explain the first moves and with the links to FAQ and ECOSYSTEM it should help the user to catch the real value of the use of Netvibes.

PS:
the ECOSYSTEM Latest modules search widget is not working properly.
If I search in the widget for IRELAND it gives no results when if I search directly in the Ecosystem I can find 57 results of which some are pertinent.

Search Not working in the New Widget Directory for Netvibes

Hi,

Netvibes has just announced that their Widgets, Universes and Tabs Directory (The ECOSYSTEM) has been revamped.

The look is changed, there is no more a FEED DIRECTORY, the new title is:
The Netvibes Widget directory.

You can see what are the most popular widgets and rate the widgets you like or not.

Netvibes pretends that now you can have :"A fresh design, a better navigation. Finding widgets has never been easier on Netvibes, you can now browse and filter widgets by categories, try our new search and see live preview on widget’s details page."

Well it was need, as I was also writing myself in July, Netvibes Ecosystem should improve the Search function...

But, as will rewiew it, I do not see any clear improvement in the search function.

The search has not clearly improved. Well, probably, if you just happen to use Netvibes, the search is better but if you use Google a few times a day then... No it has not improved. Let's show you why.

Suppose I want to find the TAB I created LONDON UK about all you need to prepare a trip to London (UK), what I should do is type LONDON UK and find the TAB in the first results but then no!

So first results are: UNIVERSES as Rugby World Cup 2007and URL Shortener ???.
Well default the selection is "Most recent" so I have to click on "Most Popular" ... let's do it.

And the result are:Finance and Mini-Clock and Babylon Box ???

I see some problems as the search seems to forget the tags, that authors have chosen for their widgets and also there is no distinction in the search function between tabs and widgets or universes...
A good solution would be to rate first "title" of the widget, then Tags, then use ratings and downloads. The missing search choice is MOST PERTINENT.

Now lets try LONDON UK TRAVEL, as a search string. But the result is the same of the previuo s search without TRAVEL ??!!

Well perhaps the search works better with the Widgets. So let's try to focus on them.
I will search for NETVIBER EXPERIENCE (well yes this blog has a feed so...) and as you can see here on the capture the first result is ... Google Calendar Embedded ...

Well, you could think that my Feed is not so popular or not so recent, ok let's try NETVIBES itself on its own Search.
Here is the result:
and surprise the first result is ... GOOGLE CALENDAR EMBEDDED... and is the same that I had for my feed so MOST POPULAR does not screen the results but gives just the most popular list with no regards for the search string ... strange!

But the wirst has to come, suppose you are a Sponsor of Netvibes and you want to see where are your universes, suppose you are the French Newspaper Group "LE FIGARO" then you search for LE FIGARO and the first result is ... MTV.it , the Italian MTV !!!!!


It seems the SEARCH FUNCTION is not working properly!

I published my London (UK) Tab in Netvibes ecosystem

Hi,

after my discussion on "How to prepare a Trip to London (Uk) with Netvibes", I published my TAB in the Netvibes Ecosystem.

You can find it here: London UK Tab for Netvibes.

Contents:
Londonist
UK Holidays
Mobissimo Travel
London Logue
Travelocity
Art Events in London this month - All In London
Kayak Search
Exhibitions in London this month - All In London
lastminute.com Entertainment
BBC News - England
Lastminute - Holidays top deals
Telegraph - Breaking news
Telegraph - Travel
BBC News - News Front Page
Lonely Planet
Museum of London Group upcoming events
Google Map
The London Symphony Orchestra News
Children and Family Events London this month - All In London
The London Philharmonic Orchestra News
Our Pick of Events in London this month - All In London
All In London News Feed - July 2007
All In London Entertainment News Feed - July 2007
London Daily Photo
Guardian Unlimited
This Is Local London Top Stories
BBC News Entertainment
Yahoo! UK Movies
Google Maps Search
UK Traffic & Travel News
London Baroque News

A tab to prepare your trip to LONDON (UK) with more than widgets, feeds and links: Weather, What to do, News, Blogs, Maps, Best deals, Traffic, Links, ...

I published it the 25th of July but it is not verified yet...

Netvibes Ecosystem should improve the Search function

Hi,

another function thet Netvibes Ecosystem should immediately improve is their search!

There is no point is listing 1050 Widgets(Modules) ; 85.000 feeds; 1160 podcasts; 282 Events; 3500 tabs and 600 Universes if the Search is not much much better.

Why? I tried to find directly the page of the Module/Widget "Netvibes Customize" .
Well, of course is just listed on the right column under Most Popular. But if I type "Netvibes Customize" (with or without braquets) in the search, I get more than 130 answers !!! And that is just limited to the Modules !!

Netvibes should replace Modules with Widgets

Hi,

I was checking the Netvibes Ecosystem for new Modules to add to my own Netviebs page and I was a bit confused in seeing that there was no more a tab for Modules and that it was replaced by Widgets!

But, If you click on the Widgets tab, that is the text "Modules are applications and services built by the community of Netvibes developers."

So if for Netvibes, Modules are the Widgets, I would expect from netvibes a massive copy/paste and the replacement of the of the old term.

I prefer myself, Widget, as is worldwide accepted and should increase the diffusion of Netvibes.