Netvibes is no more a Start-Up

With the replacement of Tariq Krim by Freddy Mini as new CEO, Netvibes has given a clear sign that the almost 3 year long Start-up phase of the project is now finished.

Many well informed insiders, as Pierre Chappaz (shareholder and former co-CEO of Netvibes and actual CEO of Wikio.com ), have declared : Netvibes is now entering the monetization phase.

On the practical side what does it mean ?

First, it is the end of all those activities for which no revenues are at sight and that could mean a reduction in the Social Features or at least not a futher development.

Second, Netvibes will move to look for a broader massive distribution as the recent deal with the French largest Cable company (Numericable.fr) by which the 4.8 million users of Numericable will be able to access a "personal" mynumericable.fr homepage. " my numericable is a completely customizable web portal for Numericable customers. MyNumericable lets users access personalized TV schedules, email, billing services, local news, weather, games, blogs, widgets and other popular services like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube—all from a single, convenient startpage, powered by Netvibes". This personal homepage is provided by Netvibes as a premium Universe.

Third, an increase of the offer of Widgets, produced and or supported by Netvibes in the hope that the long waited boom in that market will give Netvibes the revenues it still looking for.

For the average end-user, as myself, all that could mean:

• less "glamour and hipe" that only Tariq Krim was able to create around Netvibes
• lesser options to choose from as that is increasing complexity and then costs
• lesser development of the Social side of Netvibes that could have create a real Netvibes'community around the service
• lesser interest from Netvibes team to create my long dreamed Single Social Interface

I hope to be wrong on many issues ;) as I think Netvibes is now just at half of its potential and that the most interesting part of the Service is yet to come.

Tariq Krim, Netvibes'CEO, launches his new blog giving clues on Widgets' monetization

Tariq Krim, Netvibes' CEO and founder, has just launched his own blog: http://www.tariqkrim.com.

His second post is about the Monetization of the Widget economy:

Tariq expects the market to develop from the estimated 40 mln US$ for 2008 to a much bigger figure for 2009. Tariq seems also to consider an European way to Widgets, where Netvibes could take the lead.

Let's wait for a few days before commenting all this...

If you are interested here is a Business presentation in PDF make by Netvibes beginning of April 2008.


As you can see, one of the options is to bring brands and advertising inside every possible widget while the overall homepage will be not be sponsored.

Netvibes to introduce micro-banners widgets ads and text ads.

Hi,



While everybody is testing the new Ginger release (5.000 invitations in a few hours) and giving definitive opinions in a few minutes;) I was looking at a post from Erick Schonfeld on Techcrunch in which Tariq Krim, CEO and founder of Netvibes, would have express himself over the future of Widgets Monetization, and by that on the future of Netvibes revenues :



"Netvibes is part of OpenSocial and T. Krim’s had Bebo-like discussions with Facebook. “Both consortia would like us to be exclusive on their technology,” he sighs. (Sounds like the platform war is in full swing). Krim says he wants to work with both OpenSocial and Facebook.

Ultimately, T. Krim doesn’t care where you consume his widgets. By the end of the first quarter, he plans on introducing widget ads in the form of micro-banners and text ads.

The problem with widget ads, though, is that there are no standards.
“We need the equivalent of OpenSocial for advertising,” he laments.

If only everyone could agree on how to make money, the widget economy might actually come into existence."



That is interesting and must be confirmed.

About Widgets Monetization and Netvibes_part 2

Hi,

yesterday I started a discussion on the possible revenues for netvibes coming from Widgets Monetization.

Let's first explain what are Widgets and why they interest the Marketing community:

Basically, Widgets are portable applications (programs) that provide functionality and content online. Widgets can either sit on a user’s desktop or a web page and perform a function. There are desktop (Yahoo and Vista) and webtop widgets (webblog, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Myspace, iGoogle, etc.) made available via Springwidgets.com, Clearspring.com , Netvibes, Widgetbox.com, or other platforms, with many different functions that they can perform.

If you use Netvibes, by clicking on the upper left side of your page on the "ADD CONTENT" you will have a choice between Widgets and Universes.

Netvibes' Widgets are devided in Feeds (RSS) ; Basic Widgets (Weather, WebNote,...); Communication (Gmail, Yahoomail, Popmail...) ; Search (Web, Blog, Images, ...); Applications (digg, ebay, twitter,...); External widgets (UWA modules, Web page by url...) .

The interesting thing about Widgets is that you can add them where you want (if they are correctly written) and you become independent from the Original Web page. In Netvibes (or any other independent personalized homepage) you can have your Gmail next to your YahooMail and your Msn Hotmail. You can read the feeds from the BBC next to the CNN and the REUTERS (but all of you know that already).

The difficulty for the Content Providers and the Advertising industry is that the Widgets use programming languages that create problems in measuring the audience of the "Original Content Provider" as the final user (Me) is not always directly connected to the Content Provider (ex: CNN).

On the other way, the Widget builders will want to:

1) Drive Traffic to their own site (ex: Tip of the Day, Photo of the Day, latest Blog post, or a Sale of the Day )

2) Allow for a deeper connection with their consumers (ex: a nationally known pet products brand offered a desktop widget that allows users to get updated local weather and have a photo of their pet as a background)

3) Push the Brand

4) Build links (from every site that embeds the widget)

Widgets represent an entirely new way of looking at advertising.

Unlike almost all other online ads, widgets are uploaded onto sites (personal sites, profile pages, blogs) by consumers themselves. They are pulled by their audience, instead of pushed by marketers. And the publishers (largely personal publishers) who upload them are far more than affiliates: owing to these publishers’ personal dynamic and voice, they become advocates for the marketers whose widgets they help distribute.

About Widgets viewership:

In the Wall Street Journal, Comscore reports on viewership of widgets: 177.8 million in April:

Slide is leading the widget economy with 117.1 mln widget-views in April 2007, followed by RockYou with 82 mln., followed by PictureTrail, PhotoBucket, Bunnyhero Labs, BlingyBob, POQbum, Brightcove, Layoutstar and MusicPlaylist.us. 105 mln people visited MySpace in April 2007 and 38.8 mln visited Facebook.

Many readers have noted that YouTube.com is not included...

(sources:

http://www.widgetcon.com/marketing.html;

http://www.agerhart.com/web-20/why-your-business-needs-widgets/;

http://www.agerhart.com/web-20/why-your-business-needs-widgets/;

http://podmetrics.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/widgetworld-the-distributed-web-6132007/

)

Revenues of Netvibes could come from Widget Monetization

Hi,

in the same interview discussed here, Tariq Krim, Ceo and founder of Netvibes, says more aboutpossible future revenues.

On Revenues, Tariq Krim is explicit when he says that RSS will only give marginal revenues and that he believes more on Widgets monetization. "We work at the moment with numerous partners on monetization and branding of the Widgets".

"Widgets monetization is exploding".

"CBS has chosen Netvibes to widgetize the broadcasting of their videos on the web. The movies Rush Hours 3 with Jacky Chan or Hairspray with John Travolta use our Universes to promote the launch of their movies in the USA."

As Tariq Krim is not clear on the ways to do that Widget Monetization, here are some good ways to it:
1) Ads in the widget.
2) Ads within the content in the widget. Individual posts can contain advertising.
3) Ads between the posts within the widget. It is possible to have ads in between certain posts (e.g. between the second and third articles.)
4) Pre-roll/post-roll in a video in the widget.

(from http://walkerfenton.blogspot.com/search/label/widget%20monetization)

So far, the discussion around monetization has centered on how publishers can monetize the widgets that people embed on other sites.
Perhaps this is the wrong question – or an incomplete question. Maybe the discussion should be around how the widget itself can be a monetization platform for the host site.

(from: http://www.sexywidget.com/my_weblog/2006/12/widgets_and_mon.html)

Interesting page to read if you are interested:
http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/four-factors-determine-how-much-a-facebook-app-is-worth/

to be continued...