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.

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]

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]

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.

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 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]

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.

Even though I’m new to the job market, I’ve worked for and currently work for some of the most branded corporations in the Fortune 500 and also I’ve worked for one of the biggest software companies in India.  I know from first-hand that such companies aren’t as willing to give up some of their marketing to external parties or software.

Each company has their own marketing and IT departments that do this job for them.  They provide their employees with the industry news that is relevant with their own software or content publishers.

However, I see this as being a good tool for venture capital and private equity companies who solely study certain markets.  This would provide them the ability to see what other types of companies are getting funded in their industry of interest.  If the NPUs were branded for their VC or PE firms, it gives such companies the satisfaction knowing that this cost-effective and custom software was made for them specifically.  But for many of the larger companies, I believe its unlikely that they will be as willing to sign up.

I use Netvibes everyday and its a great tool, so I would recommend it for subscribing to RSS feeds.  I’ve been more pleased with them than PageFlakes.

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.

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.

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.