Netvibes is a service that allows users to create widgets using RSS feeds and other content.  Now Netvibes has rolled out a new service called Theme Publishing.  The Theme Publishing service will be a free feature for users, but the company also plans to charge brands and other agencies for custom homepages.

One of the services that Netvibes is syndicating their platform to is T-Online, the biggest German portal and ISP.  T-Online started a new service called Meine Seite.  T-Online is a subsidiary of Deutch Telekom, the German telecom company that also owns T-Mobile.  T-Online receives about 3.8 billion pageviews per month.

Since launching in 2005, Netvibes has about $16 million in funding from Index Ventures, Accel Paratners, and several other angels.

Tariq Krim, the founder of Netvibes has been working on a new project for well over a year now called Jolicloud.  Jolicloud is an operating system intended for use on netbooks.  The company has raised $4.2 million in funding from Atomico and Mangrove. Niklas Zennström of Atomico, Gilles Samoun (fotopedia CEO), and Michael Jackson (Mangrove partner) have joined the Jolicloud Board of Directors as a result of the funding.

The Jolicloud operating system utilizes a web application and cloud service interface.  Krim sees Google’s announcement of the Chrome OS as a validation for what he is trying to achieve with Jolicloud.  Krim left Netvibes on a full-time basis this past May.  Netvibes is an RSS reader website built on a cloud that has built in web applications.  In a way Jolicloud and Netvibes complement each other.  Jolicloud wants to be your default OS on a netbook and Netvibes wants to be your default homepage.

The user interface of the Jolicloud OS is similar to the iPhone operating system.  The icons of applications are large and there is very little hardware needed to keep Jolicloud running smoothly.  Jolicloud will also support touchscreens.

[via TechCrunch]

Earlier this week, I read an interesting piece from GigaOM about my favorite homepage Netvibes.com.  I depend heavily on Netvibes so I personally hope that this company succeeds.

The company has about $16 million in funding from Index Ventures, Accel Partners, Neil Rimer, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Chappaz, and Martin Varsavsky.

Last week Netvibes unleashed a new feature that allows users to build their own custom start pages.  Netvibes is able to make money by offering white-label and corporate versions of their service.

“We are on our way to being breakeven this year,” stated Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini. “We are focused on profitability this year.” That’s not bad, considering he is up against Google’s iGoogle platform.”  Netvibes receives about 3 million active visitors per month.

The company has made about a couple of million dollars in revenue this year.  The company plans on tripling sales by signing up several large customers.  The reason I found GigaOM’s post so interesting is because I did not know much about Netvibes’ revenue until now.  Based on these figures, if you depend on Netvibes as much as I do, you can remain confident that this service will be here in the long run.

[via GigaOM]

For the last 3 years, Netvibes.com has been my homepage and I have had no regrets.  It is very rare that they ever go offline.  As a matter of fact, I’d say that their track record is very comparable to Google as a whole company.  Around 12:32PM, I sent out a Tweet from my personal Twitter account saying “Netvibes seems to be down.”  About two minutes later the company replied to me saying “@amitchowdhry we were slow earlier today but it should be back to full speed since one hour already.”

Netvibes isn’t following me on Twitter and I’m not following them, but regardless they replied very fast.  That is some of the best customer service I have seen so far.

Several days ago, Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote an article that “Netvibes Appears To Be Dying.”  I wholeheartedly disagree with him.  The company has had its fair share of downtime, but who hasn’t?  Cloud computing isn’t perfect yet, but I can honestly say that as long as Netvibes is around, it will always be my homepage.

Netvibes is my homepage.  I just cannot help but think how amazing this software is.  If anyone ever asks me which service is the best RSS reader, I would have to tell them Netvibes.  Up until this point, I didn’t think the service could get any better though.

I use Netvibes to track my Twitter friends, my Digg friends, all of my favorite feeds, the weather, sports news, my stocks, etc.  Netvibes now gives the option for their users to make their feeds look more like a magazine style.  To change the style, click on the arrow associated with a page tab and select the layout options.

Netvibes also now supports Google OpenSocial.

“The true power of universal widgets lies in deploying applications across all platforms that can leverage the user’s social graph wherever it goes.” stated Freddy Mini, CEO Netvibes. “By combining Netvibes UWA’s cross-platform compatibility with OpenSocial’s many social networking partners, we’re ushering in a new era of universal, social widgets that enable true platform independence and exponentially more powerful social applications.”

To learn more about Netvibes’ flexible layout, check out the videos on their blog.

Netvibes is opening up a new service called Ginger and it recently went in Beta mode.  Netvibes’ Ginger will become the default in the middle of February.  During the time of the transition, it appears that Netvibes’ mobile site is down too.  I tried using http://m.netvibes.com today, but it wasn’t working.

Netvibes has $16 million in funding, but has not set up a real revenue model yet.  But it was revealed today that Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes is planning on setting up widget ads through micro-banners and text ads.  Netvibes Ginger will have a new interface where a pane will appear from the top to drag RSS feeds and widgets.

There are 110,000+ widgets available on Netvibes.  And Krim wants to make this technology available on other social networks as well.  But…

Interestingly, Facebook and Google both want Netvibes to be exclusive to their technologies.  Facebook as part of their Applications initiative and Google as part of OpenSocial.  Netvibes Universe will also become modifiable for all users.

I believe Netvibes is becoming the standard homepage for almost all publications and online writers.  Netvibes is the epitome of finding information as fast as possible on the Internet.  Once the new interface releases, it will be interesting to see how iGoogle and Pageflakes responds.

[Information Source: TechCrunch]

Netvibes announced today that they are formally launching Netvibes Premium Universes (NPU).  I first read about it on ReadWriteWeb where Marshall Kirkpatrick mentioned that although NPU is a great idea, it is fairly unlikely that companies will be willing at first to add a widget in an iframe or another Netvibes module form on their websites.  I agree with Kirkpatrick on that point.

If you think simply about companies in the Fortune 500 itself, many of these companies seem skeptical to start their own blogs.  Think about how hard it would be to allow a third party to control the industry or company news on their websites.

(more…)

Netvibes has recently relaunched their Ecosystem, a widget directory. Netvibes partnered NYTimes, CBS Interactive, CNET Asia, Clearspring, Widgetbox, RockYou, Miniclip, NewsGator, and yourminis for more widgets.
Some of the Premium Widgets has tabs that provide an easier way to find content and now finding widgets are easy to find by categories.  I would say that as of right now, Daily Comics is my favorite widget.  Once you add it to your Netvibes account, there is a list of comics.  If you put your mouse over a cartoon name, it will show today’s comic for that title.

What I’m still waiting for in terms of additions to the Ecosystem by Netvibes however is the ability to create public Universes.  I subscribe to many resourceful RSS feeds about technology (including the New York Times Technology section and Techmeme) and I want others in my space to benefit from what I read.  Between TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOM, Read/WriteWeb, ValleyWag and myself, I am fairly certain that we subscribe to the same feeds.

Netvibes announced today that they have released a mobile version of their website and it works very well for all phones.  The URL for the mobile Netvibes module is http://m.netvibes.com.  Although I am not sure how it looks on the iPhone, I did try out the mobile version on my HTC Mogul 6800.
Below are a couple pictures I took of Netvibes on the HTC Mogul:

I didn’t give Netvibes much credit for creating a Facebook application, but I now know that I’ll be obsessed with the mobile version of Netvibes.  Tariq Krim and other Netvibes’ team members, you are geniuses.

The Facebook application on Netvibes seems to be useful for the most part.  Friends’ mini-feed content is aggregated and summarized either in detailed views or thumbnail views are at the bottom.  And at the top there is a  list of whose birthdays are coming up (which I blurred on my screen shot).  The top portion of the application also lists friend requests, group invites, event invites, messages, and pokes.

Other than that, there is not much to the application.  Any link that a user clicks on will just open Facebook in a new window to that particular instance.  You don’t really get much use for this other than saving 30 seconds from typing in Facebook.com in your browser window and logging in because either way, this application will send you there. 

The search is pretty useful for finding friends within the RSS box itself, but after searching and clicking on the results, a new window is open again.  If Netvibes kept Facebook within their own site and places all outgoing links into a window pane instead, I would find this application more useful.  But this just seems to be just another way to be notified of friend updates and I’ve seen it before when using the Facebook Firefox toolbar plugin and when I go to m.facebook.com itself on my HTC Mogul. 

The main bullet point of my presentation is that the Facebook application on Netvibes does not benefit Netvibes users much.  Netvibes is more intended for ease of reading RSS feeds and this application just seems to be a unessential component.

Due to a disagreement between Tariq Krim and Pierre Chappaz about the future of Netvibes^[1]and Netvibes Universe efforts, Chappaz left Netvibes (while remaining a shareholder) to work fully on Wikio^[2]. Wikio is a news submission website with a voting system that is similar to Digg.

Through Wikio, users can customize the types of news they prefer to see though. How so? Users can create new tabs and then select tags or add tags that relate to the news they want to read (see screen shot below).

Does Chappaz’s departure mean bad news for Netvibes? Not likely. I think Chappaz did the right thing because whenever there are disagreements between upper management, business can only go down-hill from there. Isn’t that right, Semel?^[3]

To truly advance take any web company to the next level, upper management must have similar visions. This is probably why PageFlakes (Netvibes’ competitor) appointed Dan Cohen, Yahoo!’s former Head of My Yahoo!^[4]

And I think Wikio has potential.  If Chappaz does to Wikio what he did for Netvibes, Kevin Rose and the Digg team should watch their back.

[1] Netvibes.com
[2] Wikio.com

References:
[3] Wired 15.02: How Yahoo Blew It
[4] GigaOM: Netvibes, now with one less CEO

NetVibes.com, the RSS aggregator company that I use as my homepage has recently found a way to decrease load time. Initially, NetVibes would load up all the RSS feed tabs at once when directing your browser to the website. Now NetVibes loads up the RSS feeds only when the tab is clicked on.

Why is this important? All of the major search engine companies now offer some form of customizing a homepage. For bloggers and publishers, finding information to publish at a fast pace is essential. This is where NetVibes comes in.

A typical daily blogger or publisher has to filter information between hundreds of RSS feed stories. Now imagine having to sort through thousands of stories. Sometimes your browser cannot handle loading all of those RSS feeds at once and may crash because the publisher thought that multitasking during loading NetVibes with other applications. Its a rare scenario but speed optimization and information transfer is becoming increasingly important.

A lot of other RSS consolidation websites should take notes from NetVibes because of its clean look, easy to add content, and now a decrease in load time. Also, the customization effect is a great feature so you can decide what colors you prefer.

My RSS aggregation website of choice, NetVibes.com has unleashed several new themes and wallpapers. The new themes are called Veerle, Darkvibes, Fresh, and Fluo. My favorite is Fresh:

In the above screen shot, you will notice that there is an option to “Create My Own Theme.” What this means is that you can select your own custom color for your homepage. Below I selected a medium-toned green:

Users can input their own color hex codes or select it from the color palette.

There are also several new wallpapers that users can select for the top of their page and the bottom of their page. Users can also select the height of the header so they can see more of the header image if they wish. Header images can be imported from Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, or from a direct URL:

After playing with some of the settings, I decided that the below screen shot will be my new permanent look for NetVibes. Once I get an invitation to NetVibes Universe, I’ll share the theme and feeds:

[Information Source: NetVibes blog]

Google has been on a roll in adding features to the personalized pages. It was announced earlier today on the Google blog that on one’s own personalized page, there would be themes added and would coincide with one’s own time zone. For example, if you have a beach theme, the page would determine that if it was morning or afternoon in your time, then the beach should be lit up. And of course, if it was night time in your time zone, then the beach would be dark.

As I’m writing this, it is night in my time zone, so my theme looks like this:

Other themes that Google is currently offering in their personalized pages are Classic, Beach, Bus Stop, City Scape, Sweet Dreams, Tea House, and Seasonal Scape.

Another feature that Google added to the search results pages and to personalized pages is the + box idea. When you click on the + for certain pages, you can read data without having to leave the page. The example that the Google blog gives is the ability to open the stock quote for Apple Computer, Inc. on the search results page for “apple.” This feature was also integrated in the Google personalized page.

And speaking of personalized pages upgrades, NetVibes isn’t too far behind with improving features as well. Tariq Krim adding better RSS experiences through the Coriander launch edition of NetVibes. To read about new NetVibes features, refer to Tariq’s blog.

There is a slightly new player in the market of RSS consolidation, Feedable. The current major players are PageFlakes, NetVibes, and the search engines that allow you to customize homepages.

Currently, my vote for the best one out there is NetVibes because with PageFlakes, once you click on a link, you are immediately taken to an external website. NetVibes provides a pane with a text/image preview and then you can choose to move to the external page also.

Feedable is slightly different from the rest of the RSS consolidators though and could come out to be a fighter. While PageFlakes and NetVibes support tabs, Feedable goes by more of a cascading folder style. This is a definetely a different approach and I could foresee this as being an advantage.

NetVibes load time takes a blow for every RSS feed that you add to your customized page. For example, I subscribe to over 100 RSS feeds and NetVibes loads all of the stories from each feed. In the title of your customized NetVibes page it displays the number of feed articles that is being loaded. Basically, my NetVibes customized page isn’t finished loading until 717 articles are loaded into the system. To my understanding, Feedable doesn’t actually load the feed until you call upon a folder or category. So if you don’t want to read up on a certain category or folder, why should it have to be loaded?

This is an advantage that Feedable should consider exploiting. Below is a screen shot with an arrow pointing at the folder scheme. You’ll also notice that the navigation once inside the folders look slightly similar to a product that we all know (hint: iTunes).

In summary, I really like the idea of Feedable’s navigation, but I think that the site looks a little bit tacky. There is just something about it that makes me not want to switch from NetVibes just yet. Feedable has potential and thats what counts. Maybe I’m just so used to the panes that PageFlakes and NetVibes provide.