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.

FriendFeed aggregates your own and your friends' various Social Networks feeds (also Netvibes) :4*/5

It is a few days that I am using FriendFeed a new service that aggregates in one page your own and your friends' various Social Networks feeds and updates

For example, you can see what songs your friends are listening to on last.fm, what video they enjoyed on YouTube, their last blog or Twitter post or see the new photos they have published to Picasa. And you will show the same!

Currently, FriendFeed supports 33 different services :

News

Digg

Google Reader

Reddit

Bookmarking

del.icio.us

Furl

Google Shared Stuff

Ma.gnolia

StumbleUpon

Status

Gmail/Google Talk

Jaiku

Pownce

Twitter

Video

Seesmic

Vimeo

YouTube

Books

Goodreads

LibraryThing

Photos

Flickr

Picasa Web Albums

SmugMug

Zooomr

Blogging

Blog

Tumblr

Music

iLike

Last.fm

Pandora

Miscellaneous

Amazon Wishlists

Disqus

LinkedIn

Netflix Queue

SlideShare

Upcoming

Yelp

You choose the ones you want to share with others, you set the user/pass, and then if your page is public (open to all) or private (you must grant authorization).

Then you check for your Friends. When you click on them you see the services they share and the people they have suscribed to.

Netvibes as such is not already listed, but what you can do is to get the RSS FEED of your own public Activities on Netvibes ( In own your profile, close to "edit profile", the orange icon Feed) and insert it as ... BLOG. That way, even your "Not yet Netvibes" friends will see your Netvibes updates (but not the Star it!)

With FriendFeed you can also check people that are not already using FriendFeed by creating an "Imaginary Friend". Then, you get your friend's Twitter, Facebook,blog, Netvibes Activity, ... Feeds and by placing the Feed as a ... Blog you will be able to follow them.

But it is not just following that you can do.

With FriendFeed you can also:
Comment by leaving a short note
Like by choosing an emoticon
More by linking the entry.

You can also leave links and psot a FF status. You can also see comments from Friends of Friends, pictures and captures....

I like this service and I have created in my Netvibes page a full tab dedicated to it with the WEB PAGE widget (add content/essential widgets/Web page).
This way I check my most interesting friends in more "complete way" not, as before, service by service but activity by activity. Thanks FriendFeed !

My public FriendFeed is : http://friendfeed.com/netex and I publish there my Twetter, Blog, Netvibes Activity, Facebook updates.


NetEx Rating: 4****/5

Friendfeed is a very powerful service to aggregate your Social networks feeds and Updates.
It is the most advanced service toward my Single Social Interface dream.

The 4* means that the service is not already "finished": the search was just added a few days ago.
Friendfeed should also add Netvibes as a basic service ;)

To get FriendFeed go here

For some reading : TechCrunch

How to improve the (social) Activities of Netvibes

The Activities tab in he Ginger release of Netvibes offers 3 choices :

1. Your own personal activity that you want to keep for yourself . You will have a list of all the links you starred (shared as favorite), the Widgtes and RSS feeds you have installed, the Friends you are following or that you added, ... but also the Widgets and feeds you decided to archive.
2. Your Public Activity: your "shared as favorite" feeds or links and your Status Updated
3. Friends' Activity: is "your Friends' Public Activity "
   

For Your Private and Public Activity you have 2 options: comment and delete.
For your Friends you only have "Share as favorite" option if it was a Public Activity of the Friend but you can not do anything with their Update Status.

You have a search activities that helps you find "old" activities but you have to remember the exact title or the good friend.

The use of the My Community Widget (4****/5) simplifies a lot the Update Status of my profile and is the easiest way to check your Activities and your Contacts. (Get it from : in your private page/add content/essential widgets/My community)

But some improvement would increase the usability and then the interest in what is the Social Side of Netvibes:

Among practical Improvements it would be nice to be able to:

• star, write a short text and/or save a links/feed just for the Private Activity
• change an activity from Public to Private and viceversa (this option was existing)
• send a Direct Message to one single friend directly (perhaps on his MyWall widget?)
  
• view in My Activities the posts of other Social services like Twitter
• post and view images like in Twixtr.com
• have the option to view My own Public Activities mixed with My Friends Activities (like in Twitter ) because is it easier to follow a discussion
• increase the number of activities in the Widget (20 is very small you work and write a lot or if you have a lot of friends ;) )
• give the possibility to filter and backup your Best activities for future use

Among other futuristic features I dream of there is :

• a Web Browser plug-in that would allow me to Star (share as favorite) any content I would see on the web directly in my Netvibes page with a comment to be shared with friends or just archived for myself.
  

PageOnce with Netvibes could become my Single Social Interface ?

Hi,

A new service called PageOnce is also in his beta ;)

They say: "Simply select your personal accounts from social networking, email and travel to entertainment, banking, credit cards and much more and add them to your personal page."

You can retrieve information from many banking, social networking, airline, email, and shopping accounts such as Citibank, Facebook, American Airlines, Gmail, and Amazon.

PageOnce takes the information appropriate to each account (once you give it your username and password, of course) and displays it in a Netvibes-like layout.

According to TechCrunch :

"Netvibe’s founder Tariq Krim (asked) whether they planned to provide this functionality, said that Netvibes is already discussing the possibility with several account providers supported by PageOnce."

PageOnce seems to have the leg up since they’ve already proven that they can aggregate this sort of information. But since they rely on their own efforts to expand support for an inexhaustible number of accounts, a more decentralized approach with Netvibes as the focal point and account providers as the widget developers themselves could win out in the long run."

In conclusion, PageOnce with Netvibes or netvibes with PageOnce could really become my long waited Single Social Interface. ;)

Netvibes unveils first official preview of Ginger release

Hi,

The Netvibes blog is unveiling the first official preview of the new Ginger release that will officially presented at the LE WEB 3 Conference in Paris next Tuesday.

As I already announced as a scoop, the main change will be the Social twist made by Netvibes.

With Netvibes Ginger, you will be able to:

• Import your friends from your favorite social networks or make new friends directly in your Netvibes page
• use Activity, a new feature that will let you know what your friends are doing
• you can archive and tag as favorite any content or any widgets for yourself or with your friends
• you can create your own Universe and build your public Netvibes page
• add your myspace or facebook friends, and distribute widgets

Perhaps all this could help NETVIBES to become my Single Social Interface ?

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!