New Friend category is emerging in Social Networks: the Best Friends

As mentionned in this post from Inside Facebook blog, the new Facebook Privacy rules changes are increasing the role of the Friend Lists.

Facebook, as one of the largest Social Networks is also leading the trend. And "Starting last week, Facebook elevated Friend Lists to central status within the Facebook user experience by making it the basis around which users can specifically limit access to certain information for certain friends."

A new Friend category is, in my view, emerging: the Best Friends.

Since now you had just a 1 choice : all of your Friends(as Netvibes , Facebook, FriendFeed ...) or Following (in Twitter, ...) were the same: could read and follow you the same. Now that will change to reflect better the real life.

Your Best Friends will the only one with whom you will share all your "limited" public data.

If Netvibes was to get soon in that breach, that could give birth to "private Universes" with restricted access only to selected Best Friends.

NEW : Put your Netvibes Ginger in your Facebook

A new Application is available to add your Netvibes Universe in your Facebook.

This application, as you can see in the image, presents a Profile box with your own Netvibes Universe link, the list of your Public activities (that you can share with Facebook) and the count with icones of all your Netvibes Followers.

You have also an Invite your friend by email option and a Share this application with your Facebook friends.

To install the Ginger Application for Facebook click here.

You must be a Netvibes Ginger user to use it ;)

Let me use it for a couple of days before giving my advice and give yours here.

What kind of animal is Netvibes today ? A PLATYPUS !

A PLATYPUS ??!!

YES, A PLATYPUS !

Platypus ( (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a small , nice, unique semi-aquatic , duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed, egg-laying, venomous mammal with dense brown fur living in Australia .

If you look back , NETVIBES was an Homepage or a Start Page : It was the your new Private page: a new entry point for the Web to read your preferred feeds, check the weather, your emails .... The competition is from: iGoolge, MyYahoo!, Live.com, Pageflakes,...

Slowly, the new socials networks appeared and with the Ginger release, a new Netvibes was presented. Now, you can have now your own Public Page on Netvibes: Netvibes has become a Social Service on its own but in competition with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo ...

Now, as evolution continues also in the web, Widgets (those small programmes that you can add to your page) are becoming the big thing... They can travel, they can be today in Netvibes but tomorrow (even today if you want) you will bring them in your own Blog or in your web site.

At this point Netvibes have to evolve again...

So Netvibes wants to become also a Widget Market place in competition with: Widgetbox, Slide, Rockyou, Goowy, Clearspring, Gigya, ...

Other evolutions are awaited: Online Web Storage could be the next one...

So, Netvibes = Platypus , not a strange definition for me ...

WHO IS THE AVERAGE NETVIBES USER ?

The Average Netvibes user can be described today (before full upgrading to the Netvibes Ginger release with its new social approach) and accordingly to the poor public data available (my own poll) as:

• Mainly Male (87%)
• Aged 25-35 (47%)
• Working or studying in the Internet and/or Technology field (65%)
• Logining to Netvibes more than once daily (92%)
• Using Netvibes at Home (95%) and at Work (87%)
• Looking to be part of a “Wide Netvibes Community” (59%)
• Have more than 6 Tabs in their page (68%)
• Using widgets for :

1. Checking Emails (81%)
2. Reading Feeds (76%)
3. Checking Weather (66%)
4. Writing WebNote (58%)
5. Checking their Facebook account (53%)
6. For other uses (52%)

That result is consistent with my experience visiting other users' Public Universes already available: a vast majority of Males users, a lot of WEB 2.0/ TECH tabs, a lot of feeds and blogs of the Universes owners.

At the moment, in what is still a beta testing, quite a large group of users seems coming from France but that is not surprising as Netvibes is based in Paris.

But consider that for the month of January 2008, according to Compete.com, Netvibes had 600.000 unique visitors just for the US market with a total of 4,2 mln visits from unique visitors while competitors Protopage and Pageflakes are at a much lower level.

(To have a global view, Compete.com for the same period gives the following numbers for Myspace.com (67mln visitors with 1,021mln visits) and Facebook.com (31mln visitors with 352 milions visits)).

If Netvibes Team has better and more reliable data, we would be pleased to publish them ;)

Netvibes will follow Myspace and Facebook for Content ?

Hi,
just read on TechCrunch this post from Michael Arrington concerning the quest of Content from the 2 leaders of WEB2.0 Social Networking Sites:

"MySpace continues to roll out local versions of its social network. ...they tend to put a team on the ground locally (they are now hiring in Turkey) and then build the site not only in the local language, but promote local artists and other popular culture as well. MySpace now has offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Sydney, Mexico City, Sao Palo, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Tokyo, and Beijing. Offices will be opening up soon in Mumbai, Moscow, and Istanbul.

Facebook is taking a radically different approach - tapping users to do all the hard work for them. They are picking and choosing markets (Spanish was opened first, two weeks ago; today German and French were launched) and asking just a few users to test out their collaborative translation tool. Once the tool is perfected and enough content has been translated, Facebook will offer users the ability to quickly switch the language on the site, per their preference.

As, I already written more than once, Netvibes will also have to go, fast, for more Content, not only local...

What Netvibes and Facebook have in common ?

Hi,

with the new Ginger update coming It would be interesting to think at what Netvibes and Facebook have in common.

Today I have not time to do it but I found a very intersting user interview by Alex Iskold of ReadWriteWeb that gives some ideas...

Can Netvibes become My Single Social Interface ?

Hi,


Just read a good post by Kin Lane on his blog about his reaction to Yahoo declaration that the future will be modeled on Facebook and emails. All started from a NYT paper stating that Google and Yahoo " hope to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services (iGoogle and MyYahoo) into social networks".


Kin lists his request for a "future" Single Social Interface that will be serving all your personal and professional needs in just one interface.


As I agree on the list here it is with my views on the ability of Netvibes to help. But first I want to state the big advantage, at the moment, for Netvibes: is "independent" from megagroups as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft..

1. My Profile - I want a single profile Not yet but possible with the help of http://openid.net/ + http://oauth.net/about/
2. Contacts - I want a single point of entry for people in my life Possible
3. Individual Communication - I want a single point of entry for all communications and prioritzed by the senders relationship with me Possible
4. Network Communication - I want to be able to communicate with my network of contacts, friends and family through any way that works for me and for them Possible
5. Public Communication - I need to communicate with the general public Not good enough
6. Information - All the information I need daily Almost perfect
7. Schedule - I should be able to easily manage my private and public schedule Not yet good enough
8. Storage - Everything should be in one central place and then be able to distribute where ever I need or want it. No good
9. Projects - Project tracking for everything I do So So
10. Applications / Tools - I really need an application framework that is desktop, rich, and web all at once Not available but needed

to be clear here is also a graph

So let's hope that Netvibes evolves fast in that direction!

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 !

Netvibes presents the Facebook Widget

Hi,

Netvibes has just announced the Facebook Widget.

Now the Netvibers will be able to check their Facebook accounts on the Netvibes page.

On the Content side, Netvibes is using Facebook (as any other external source) to try to increase its own audience: that's fair enough but Facebook does not accept the situation.

In fact, Facebook does not currently allow outsider providers to access their News Feed.

In other words, Facebook won't let you display your News Feed from the front page in your widget (or change your status for that matter.) . Facebook is then retaing its own content to be viewed on its own website.

That way, Facebook increases the traffic on its own site. Facebook future tactic could be to create a Netvibes style platform and offer it to its own audience to keep them there.

The WEB PORTALS 2.0 are coming ...

More infos:

- for Competition from Homepages with Facebook: "To compete with Facebook as a social network, they need to attract third party developers - and quickly."

- for Competition between Facebook and Myspace: "Facebook’s strategy is almost the polar opposite from MySpace. While MySpace frets over third party widgets, alternatively shutting them down or acquiring them, Facebook is now opening up its core functions to all outside developers."

Netvibes in interesting Web Trend Graph.

Hi,

on the Blog of Freddy Mini I found this interesting graph about WEB TRENDS.

Netvibes is marked 2.0 when Facebook, Wordpress, Wikipedia are already 2.5.