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...

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."