Netvibes Launches Corporate Startpages - Will Companies Go For It?
Netvibes, the French startpage near the top of the startpage market, is launching a new service this morning called Netvibes Premium Universes. The service allows companies to offer Netvibes functionality (reading feeds, posting widgets) on their own website with their own branding and domain. It's essentially a Netvibes page in an iframe on your website.
It's a great idea in theory, but I don't know how many companies will go for it. At launch the flagship customers include spam-factory Tagged.com and "the toolbar and content division of digital media company MIVA Inc." - they sell ads, including those despicable double-underline link ads. Fortunately two leading French newspapers, Les Echos and Le Figaro are part of the launch - without them you'd have to wonder why the product couldn't be sold to any legitimate businesses.
I love Netvibes; I use their basic service and their new mobile display all day long. Give me the feed for items I've tagged "toread" in Del.icio.us displayed on my Netvibes Mobile and I'm in heaven. I am concerned though that there may not be widespread interest in providing that kind of functionality on websites in the business world.
Netvibes needs to make money; apparently that's something that's a touch challenging for these startpage services. It doesn't have to be impossible, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it.
If you've got the reins on a business site that could use some startpage functionality, perhaps you should check out the new Netvibes Premium Universes. If they don't end up doing it well, and they probably will, then Pageflakes, YourMinis, MyYahoo! or iGoogle will. The only question I have is whether there will be meaningful demand in the enterprise world for a relatively lightweight product like a consumer level startpage. Enterprise Twitter seems more likely to me.
For a good look inside the startpage world, see our podcast interview at Read/WriteTalk with Dan Cohen, the CEO of Netvibe's competitor Pageflakes.
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Hi,
I agree with you and I will add that for me, this is just a piece of action in the CREATION OF CONTENT that will guarantee a long independent life to Netvibes.
Posted by: Netviber | October 3, 2007 6:57 AM
Netviber - that could be the case. Either way, neat to see that you've got a whole blog about Netvibes! Thanks for commenting.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | October 3, 2007 7:05 AM
Startpage market?!? You mean Startpage Bubble or Startpage Hype Cycle, right? Markets don't exist for features...
Posted by: Thomas | October 3, 2007 7:41 AM
Does anyone remember My Excite and My Yahoo! getting into this business back in the day?
It will be interesting to see if now is the time for this offering.
Posted by: shanan | October 3, 2007 7:53 AM
A Startpage is the best internet business (after search/domaining) from a monetization point of view...Just including a revenue shared search box may provide as much as $15 per active user/year.
Posted by: Gopi | October 3, 2007 10:28 AM
Shanan. It's funny you mention My Excite. I launched the start page product at Excite. Initially, we called it Excite Live! and then renamed it My Excite. It was a product leader in the day. (Best Start Page 1998 ;-) )
My Yahoo is clearly the leader in the start page space. In regards to enterprise, There are two segments. The first is a distribution page for a media property. Netvibes deal with Les Echos is an example. The later is the corporate intranet market. The former could be very interesting. The later is highly fragmented, but tough to crack. Y! disbanded their corporate start page business a few years back. And yes, it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Posted by: Eric Engleman | October 3, 2007 1:25 PM
Google has been experimenting with a "Personalized Start Page for Enterprise" for over a year now - ref: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_instant_intranet.php
I can see the benefits for companies using a start page to promote their products or services to customers. Also as a lite intranet, it has some appeal (as a start page for company widgets and mini web apps).
Overall, it's a potentially big market for Netvibes and the other start pages - so good move by them!
Posted by: Richard MacManus | October 3, 2007 2:46 PM
I find it difficult to think that most companies would go for this idea. While it may be affordable et cetera it removes the control from the companies. They would be hard pressed to make a go of it. Just my two cents.
Posted by: Dave | October 3, 2007 2:50 PM
"...netvibes, the pioneer of startpages..."
is it just me or does this sound a bit arrogant (and untrue)? sure, their product is nice but it's certainly not the pioneer.
Posted by: corey | October 3, 2007 4:18 PM
Hi to all,
Well Netvibes is not the pioneer of startpages, but if you consider WEB 2.0 market for startpages, Netvibes is, at the moment, the leading competitor in terms of: 1) independence from MegaGroups, 2) collaborative creation of content, 3) overall quality, 4) international openess, 5) general compatibility (IE, FF..; PC-MAC, PC-mobile,)...
In my point of view what is missing is the attractiveness for the BIG AUDIENCE.
In my analysis, Netvibes and the other starting pages are used mainly used for Feed reading. All the other possible practical uses are yet to be publicised (or discovered).
But CONTENT is always the key for success. It must not be Netvibes OWN content but a starting page has to give you the content you need (even if you do not know it already).
Posted by: Netviber | October 4, 2007 2:42 AM