Recently a new personalized start page product was announced, Webwag. In the comments to my post about Webwag, several people expressed their view that start pages are not a viable business. Personally I think start pages have plenty of opportunities to make money, despite (and sometimes because of) competition from Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.

An independent platform

The first point to make is that - unlike the big Internet companies - start pages like Netvibes, Pageflakes and Webwag are independent. This means they can act as a platform for a wider range of businesses than the big Internet companies - whose main purpose is to be a platform for their own portal products.

In practical terms, what this means is that the small start pages can make partnerships with other small businesses and startups. A recent example of this is Pageflakes teaming up with Zixxo to offer local coupons. As the Pageflakes blog put it:

"...businesses can create and manage their coupons with Zixxo and they syndicate them out to local consumers through partner websites. All Pageflakes users can now add the Zixxo Flake to their personal page and search for local coupons, specials and discounts."

Pageflakes has also recently buddied up with Odeo Podcasts, Rapleaf Reputations, Correios Package Tracking and others.

Netvibes also has a raft of partner modules - including for eBay, Digg, Meebo and Alexa.

So we're seeing a number of these 'partnerships' happening in the start page space and it'll only increase over time. While there's nothing stopping the big companies (Google, MS, Y!) doing the same, in reality their major priority is to promote their own proprietary product range. For example, why would Google Personalized Page promote Zixxo's coupons when they have their own Google Local coupons?

Pageflakes homepage

The Widgetizing of the Web

If you consider the trend towards a world of widgets and gadgets (mini web applications), you begin to see the potential to make real money from an independent platform. As I wrote in a June article entitled The Future of Personalized Start Pages, the likes of Pageflakes and Netvibes "are building up to a near future where gadgets/widgets will be much more plentiful and functional. Basically these start pages are expecting the world of web services to blossom in the next few years, which is my expectation too."

The big Internet companies stand to gain a lot from this too - e.g. in my recent interview with GM Windows Live George Moore, he said that Windows Live is being built on their gadget architecture. Microsoft expects to see gadgets being used across many different devices. Moore said:

"The gadget architecture can actually render to any number of different technologies. It can render to DHTML, to Avalon, etc. So it would be up to the gadget author to detect if they're running on a Vista machine, if they choose."

So widgets/gadgets are ramping up to be a key part of the Web platform going forward, which all the start pages (big and small) are ideally placed to leverage. And the smaller start pages have certainly not shied away from building up their platforms. Pageflakes now has 100 "flakes" (i.e. widgets) and recently introduced more customization options. Likewise, Netvibes is putting in a lot of work on their module ecosystem.

Netvibes Ecosystem

White Labelling

Another option for small start pages is to white label their technology - i.e. offer it to other organizations as a customizable start page. I can see a lot of potential demand from corporates and media companies to use a start page, with their own branding, so that employees and/or customers may create their own 'portal' experience. Similar to what Reddit is doing in the social news space.

Affiliate Marketing

Webwag CEO Franck Poisson said that affiliate marketing is a key aspect of their start page, a la what Netvibes is doing with Kelkoo. And as e-consultancy recently wrote, there is potential for start pages to move into 'social shopping'. This could mean building on the partnerships mentioned above and ensuring that start pages get a cut of whatever is sold via a merchant's widget on their page.

New start page, Webwag

International Expansion

This is one of the more interesting areas for small start pages to explore, particularly given the relative weakness of the big Internet companies outside of the US and english-speaking countries. It's interesting to note that the small start pages I've mentioned in this post are all based in Europe - Pageflakes in Germany, Netvibes in France and Webwag in France too.

Netvibes is in the process of making their service much more international:

"At netvibes, we are actively working to make our service available to everyone in every language. In fact, we have already built a collaborative tool for the translation of any content on netvibes. The service, now in beta, enabled us to successfully translate the site into Spanish and Japanese."

Similarly, Pageflakes has recently localized to China, Brazil and Germany.

So catering to the international markets is a key way that the small start pages can do business - because as I've discovered while doing my series on international web apps, localization matters and it's something the big Internet companies aren't necessarily good at.

Summary

Pageflakes CEO Christoph Janz told me that "personalized startpages like Pageflakes have a business model that is similar to 'old school' portals: build a large customer base and monetize it via advertising, e-commerce commissions and lead generation." And Christoph believes the independence of small start pages will enable them to "connect thousands of providers with millions of consumers of digital content, services and applications."

Which is to say: there are opportunities aplenty for smart start pages and I think the early entrants Netvibes and Pageflakes are particularly well-placed to take advantage of them. I'll be interested to see what Webwag brings to the table, plus it wouldn't surprise me to see more entrants to this market (e.g. it's not a stretch for the likes of Suprglu or 43Things to consider doing a start page).

Of course the big 3 will likely take a huge chunk of the start pages market, but in my view there are more than enough opportunities for the smaller players.