We have no idea what the "final network" will be, but it certainly seems to hint at the further social networkification of iGoogle. We think that's smart. In May of last year we theorized that start pages were very well suited to take on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. "Whereas Facebook is just launching their platform," we wrote at the time, "Netvibes and Pageflakes each already have an evolved and popular platform ecosystem in place. What they lack is the social scene." We called adding social interactivity features to start pages the "next logical step" for those companies.

A couple of months later, it appeared that taking on social networks was exactly what Pageflakes and Netvibes were planning to do. "Start pages will challenge the existing social networks - it's almost evolutionary for them to become social networks," wrote Richard MacManus.

In July, we laid out a plan to fix Yahoo! that revolved around building out a developer platform for their web-leading start page, MyYahoo! The final step of our plan was to make the platform social.

And just last week, Pageflakes was acquired by LiveUniverse, a move that we saw as a step toward the further socialization of Pageflakes. "Along with [MySpace founder Brad] Greenspan, LiveUniverse has original MySpace engineer Toan Nguyen on its management team. That's some serious chops in the area of social networking, which is where Pageflakes has been heading since ... last July," we wrote.

Google's announcement today may just kick off an industry wide trend toward turning start page properties into social networks -- often, as Google goes, so goes the web. That makes a lot of sense. Start pages generally already have rich developer ecosystems with many useful apps, and because they act as "first stops" for many users, they're already sticky. Adding in social networking functions just increases utility for users.

Along with Greenspan, LiveUniverse has original MySpace engineer Toan Nguyen on its management team. That's some serious chops in the area of social networking, which is where Pageflakes has been heading since the "Blizzard" update last July. We speculated then that Pageflakes was aiming to take on social networks by adding interaction features and networking among users, which is an idea that we initially advanced in a piece we published last May.

"Both Netvibes and Pageflakes already act as platforms, with sophisticated developers APIs for creating widgets and programs to interact with their users," we wrote in May of the two leading AJAX start page companies. "Both companies allow users to customize their pages, and inject personality into them. Both companies also already encourage users to share their creations (Universes and Pagecasts). Perhaps, the next step beyond sharing should be interaction."

Pageflakes started to do that last summer, but perhaps bringing Greenspan and Nguyen into the mix will push Pageflakes further into social networking territory. The first tie-in between the two companies, according to a press release, will be to use Pageflakes' page customization technologies to enhance the social networking aspects of the LiveVideo site.

We're hoping that the two cook up a lot more than that. A quote from Pageflakes CEO Dan Cohen in the press release about the acquisition seemed to hint at bigger things on the horizon: "The combination of our two companies is truly much bigger than the sum of its parts, and the resulting innovation will be highly compelling for our users and partners."

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.

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.

Of course it only includes Facebook data, not data from third party widgets. To be really cheeky, Netvibes should find a way to include all your third party Facebook widgets ;-) However Netvibes has actually done very well, because the only thing missing seems to be Facebook's news feed - because Facebook does not currently allow outsider providers to access the News Feed. Given that Facebook is not very open (at least outwards), this is impressive. Also it should be mentioned that you still need to click through to facebook to go through your friend requests, group invites, etc.

"Both Netvibes and Pageflakes already act as platforms, with sophisticated developers APIs for creating widgets and programs to interact with their users. Both companies allow users to customize their pages, and inject personality into them. Both companies also already encourage users to share their creations (Universes and Pagecasts). Perhaps, the next step beyond sharing should be interaction."

This is precisely what Pageflakes has done in its latest version - created social networking interaction. I'll get back to the bigger question later in this post (which is: can Pageflakes and Netvibes compete with Facebook?), but first let's check out the new features in Pageflakes.

Pageflakes Blizzard

There's no doubt that Pageflakes Blizzard has greatly improved its UI. The big shiny gold menu button on the top-right makes it very easy to add new widgets (a.k.a. flakes) and content to your page. I did notice a few navigation issues - for example adding an RSS feed to your page wasn't as intuitive as before (you need to click 'Browse Flakes' in the menu, then there is a small 'Add RSS feed' option at the bottom; but if you click 'Browse All Flakes' you get taken to a new page which doesn't have the 'Add RSS feed' option?). But these are minor issues, compared to the attractive UI and themes that users get to play with.

To test the new features, I created a new Pagecast called Richard MacManus' Page. This is basically a Pageflakes page featuring some of my favorite feeds and widgets, which I have shared with the world. Another nice feature is that you don't have to start from scratch, but can copy another person's Pagecast. I used Mike Arrington's Pagecast as a template, to create this:

Read/WriteWeb also has a Netvibes Universe, which was custom made for us recently. But to be honest, the Pageflakes one looks more slick.

Competing with Facebook

In both Pageflakes and Netvibes, there are some good widgets to choose from - although it has to be said that Facebook has a much larger selection than both start pages. That's because Facebook has enjoyed a huge amount of third party developer interest in its platform, allowing the 30 million + Facebook users to choose virtually any widget they want. It isn't quite as easy in Pageflakes or Netvibes. For example I wanted to add a last.fm widget to my Pagecast, but there wasn't one. Same for Netvibes. Whereas on Facebook, there are at least 7 last.fm widgets to choose from.

And therein lies the problem for both Pageflakes and Netvibes. To compete with Facebook as a social network, they need to attract third party developers - and quickly.

Pageflakes profiles

The other main feature, other than widgets, which makes a Facebook-like social network is profiles. Here is my profile. My main suggestion to Pageflakes here is to make 'people discovery' easier and related to things like interests and hobbies. Right now it seems you can only add new people by manually clicking through to their profile (via search or clicking on their profile link on their Pagecast etc). Although having said that, when I clicked through to Dan Cohen's (Pageflakes CEO) page, I saw a 'People with similar interests' pane - which wasn't on my page. So perhaps it takes a little bit of browsing around to get that onto your own profile.

Conclusion

Pageflakes has taken the next step from being just a start page, by adding social networking functionality. Netvibes hasn't yet gone that far, but I suspect it's coming soon.

However there's still a lot of work to be done by both start pages to catch up to Facebook or even MySpace - and that's purely down to number of third party widgets and of course number of users on the network. So while I agree with Josh that start pages will challenge the existing social networks - it's almost evolutionary for them to become social networks - it will need a big influx of developers and users before they're truly competitive in that space.

Disclosure: Pageflakes is a R/WW sponsor

"The new My Yahoo is a step forward but misses the mark. It is more about Yahoo! and less about today's users of the Web, who expect more from their personalized page. Their new personalization feature steers you towards Yahoo! services while restricting access to others like Google and MySpace. The new version limits user choice because it isn’t open to developers. Lastly, you can’t publish your personalized page on the web, or collaborate on your page with others."

What it comes down to is that Yahoo obviously has a huge store of content and Web properties it can utilize in its personalized homepage. Whereas Pageflakes is one of the 'little guys' (along with slightly bigger little guy Netvibes), so its strengths and opportunities will be in opening up its platform and encouraging use of content from all over the Web.

Update: Greg Linden picks up on the theme of personalization in the My Yahoo Beta, noting that it may also be applied to the Yahoo home page - i.e. both My Yahoo and yahoo.com "may soon adapt to your behavior and try to learn what you might want."

Read/WriteWeb got a sneak peak at the beta and we have some screenshots, along with our initial impressions, below. There is also a screencast available (but for now it is high res and slow to load; I'll notify you when a better version is up).

My Yahoo! has been Yahoo's personalized offering to its consumers since 1996. In the preview, Yahoo told me that My Yahoo! is seen as their "narrowcast" option for users, while the yahoo.com frontpage is seen as the broadcast model. However I was also told that, over time, the two homepages will converge. Certainly, the first thing I noticed about the new beta My Yahoo was that it had some of the new features Yahoo introduced last year with its Ajax makeover of yahoo.com. And the look and feel is very similar between the two.

My Yahoo! is essentially a user's dashboard, or start page, for the web. So it shares a lot in common with Microsoft's Live.com, Google's Personalized Homepage, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Webwag, and many others. However up till now, My Yahoo has been a relatively static personalized homepage - mostly devoid of the widgets and gadgets that populate the likes of Netvibes and Live.com. Also the design was rather conservative, although to be fair probably much more usable than the other 'start pages'. Also, My Yahoo was an early adopter of RSS feeds (not full text though).

New Features

The beta My Yahoo has a fresh new design and some neat interactive features (using ajax of course!). It also aims to make personalization simpler. Some of the new beta features include tools for:

• pre-built personalized page for each user, based on data Yahoo has already gleaned from their usage of Yahoo properties - the design of the page is closely aligned with yahoo.com;
• Category pages for topics such as cooking, plus "content suggestions";
• Users can further customize their page with drag-and-drop modules, and new four-column and small search box layouts;
• Feed previews and a full post reader on the page;
• Editable Personal Assistant with instant access to things like Yahoo! Mail, horoscopes, local traffic, etc;
• Redesigned modules from Yahoo! and select partners, with games, music, commerce, sports updates, weather, finance portfolios, TV listings, etc;
• Sharing feature, enabling users to send their My Yahoo! page or favorite modules to friends and family - note, this is very similar to Pageflakes' sharing feature, only Yahoo told me that their sharing service doesn't require sign-ups;
• More "new interactive modules" to come

Also noteworthy is the "hover bubble" (an unofficial term for an ajax-based text bubble). My favorite new feature so far is the MyYahoo Reader, which offers full text (yay!). Both of these features aim to give the consumer more content in the page, without navigating away.

What's not there currently? Widgets, but Yahoo told me that over time Yahoo! Widgets (aka Konfabulator) will be integrated with My Yahoo.

Conclusion

As you can see from the screenshots below, the new beta My Yahoo is much easier on the eye than the current My Yahoo. It is very slick and easy to use too. My Yahoo currently gets 50 million monthly users worldwide (their figure) and so it is the biggest "personalized homepage" on the market. As such it is careful about rolling out new ajax and web 2.0 features – in order to avoid the Netscape.com or USAToday re-design backlash from users. Yahoo also says it received "a fundamental United States patent for the invention of personalized start pages" back in 1999, although who knows what that means.

The new My Yahoo is a great improvement already on the old one and we'll be tracking its progress over the coming months, as it is slowly released to the mass market.

Update: Ex-My Yahoo Boss, Now Pageflakes CEO, Responds to My Yahoo Beta

My Yahoo Reader

Customize colors, columns, etc

Similarities to yahoo.com

Add Content

Sharing

It's the season of v2.0 launches! The personalized start page Pageflakes has undergone a major upgrade to its interface, which has just gone live today. Back in May I posted about Pageflakes' page publishing feature, which enables users to share their pages with other people - as read-only or editable. This type of community functionality has been extended in the new version of Pageflakes. On the homepage it states:

"You can have multiple pages. For each of them you can choose to keep it private, share it with friends or publish it on the Web."

The idea is to enable users to form groups and share widgets that way. This may drive user growth, as people get 'invited' into the system by their friends and family. That looks to be the plan anyway - and it'll be interesting to watch how it works out. There is still a sense that personalized start pages are too geeky for the average user, which Pageflakes (and its competition) will need to overcome.

The page sharing and publishing functionality differentiates Pageflakes from its competitors - and gives Pageflakes a social networking feel to it. Netvibes (probably its main competitor) appears to be focusing more on being a homepage for individual users - reflected in the Netvibes motto of "making your digital life better". Webwag, a recent entry to this space, has also established itself as a player via a strategic partnership with Yahoo.

What's interesting here is that the leading small players (i.e. not Google or Microsoft) are beginning to differentiate themselves - each has their own style and positioning now. Could this be a sign that the start pages space is maturing?

Nevertheless there's a bit of an 'arms race' going on between all the start pages regarding the number of widgets they have. Pageflakes has 120, while Netvibes has 391. Microsoft's Live.com has 442 at this date. But all are dwarfed by Google Personalized Page, which boasts 1531 gadgets (see my 10 favorite here). It may not be totally apples and oranges, in terms of what each vendor counts as a widget - e.g. some of Google's widgets are pretty much just RSS feeds. In any case, I think Pageflakes is wise to focus on building its community features rather than try and compete on number of widgets.

The Start Page space never ceases to interest me, as it's a hotbed of web innovation. The pace is hot too, as both Netvibes and Pageflakes have released "2.0" versions recently!

The applications accessible on Business Web Desktop will include: activities, opportunities, leads, campaigns, other objects (including custom objects). The idea of this "customized desktop" is to provide all the information business people need on a single screen. The user interface relies heavily on a dynamic Ajax interface. Other features include multiple panes, data refresh in each pane occurring when data changes, and dynamic lists that expand as the user mouses over them.

Because this is for enterprise, there is a certain amount of control maintained by the IT dept. Admins will configure the page layouts and mini page layouts and assign users to profiles and record types. Users can however set up their own list views.

There has been some discussion on whether this Business Web Desktop will replace the salesforce.com "home tab" in the service. That won't happen in the Winter '07 release, but possibly in future:

"In the Winter release, we will be adding the Console as a separate Tab, it will not replace the Home tab, but that has been discussed."

We've written before about 'personalized start pages' being a great option for company dashboards or even intranet homepages. So good to see this is turning into reality, care of Salesforce.com. Winter '07 is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter. Here are some initial screenshots - a bit blurry, but they are the only ones currently available...

See also: Salesforce.com previews Analytics and Dashboard Mash-Ups

I liked Om's conclusion, which I heartily agree with - not just for Netvibes but Pageflakes and the other small start pages too. Om said:

"...when I see Netvibes, I see a company that is offloading a bulk of heavy lifting to the client, aka the browser. Not very different than Skype, you could say. I see a tool that if nurtured properly could become the gatekeeper to my attention. Just like MySpace has the attention of its 100 million plus users, Netvibes can do the same, but as a starting point for our digital journeys. Of course, the company has to keep innovating and coming up with ways to extend their ecosystem. And they need to maintain unwavering focus on making the service easier, faster and more convenient to use."

Despite Netvibe's 5M user base (is that return users?), we're still a way off start pages being mainstream tools. Yahoo has shown little interest in doing one - which indicates they're still of niche value. And I've determined they're no good as RSS Readers (both Netvibes and Pageflakes ate up too much of my PC's memory every time they loaded up all my RSS feeds). But as a home to mini web apps and widgets, which will become increasingly popular, start pages have a promising future.

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.

"According to Poisson, Webwag will shortly launch a toolbar, allowing users to import bookmarks and other sites into widgets on their home page, as well as to search their chosen sites or the web as a whole. For the latter, it has inked a partnership with a “big search company”, which Poisson won’t name."

What's more, Poisson is talking up the chances of the independent start pages - such as Pageflakes, Netvibes and now Webwag. He thinks the big companies - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo - won't capture more than 50% of the market:

"According to Poisson, Webwag’s revenue streams will include affiliate marketing – something Netvibes is doing via Kelkoo - and B2B deals, an as yet unexplored area. Chris previously suggested that white labelling this technology is one key revenue opportunity for these firms to consider.

Poisson said: "As Web 2.0 develops over the next three three to five years, two things will remain. Firstly, everyone will have their own blog, and over 75% of people will have their own personalised start pages.

"My belief is the big search portals (My Yahoo etc) will get 50% of that market, and 50% will be taken by three to four independents.”"

Personally I think that 50% figure for independents is too ambitious. I also question his claim that 75% of people will have a start page in 3-5 years, unless you count the likes of Yahoo.com as a 'personalized start page' (actually I suspect the distinction will be moot in 5 years time).

In any case I do believe there is very viable market for the 'independents' - particularly in white labelling and B2B deals. Personalized start pages are one of the more inventive areas of Web technology at the moment, with action aplenty from Internet giants and small startups alike. It'll be interesting to see what Webwag has to offer - currently the link above is password-protected.

On business models for start pages, the Postbubble blog floated the concept of "consolidation" as a means to rise above the standard advertising-supported model:

"An example of this would be to consolidate industry-specific news, market data, competitive intelligence, email, and even collaboration tools in such a way that it would appeal to companies interested as a corporate start page. You could even make it specific to the sales group, marketing group, or R&D.")

A business portal was one of the things I mentioned in my post as an option for start pages, so I like Postbubble's thinking there.

This is great to see and shows (once again) that Google is tackling Microsoft head-on in key market segments. Indeed earlier this evening Microsoft announced an upgrade to its personalized homepage, live.com (it will be released next week, but I have preview screenshots on my ZDNet blog). Also of course, the little startups are doing a lot in this market currently (Netvibes, Pageflakes, et al). See my post earlier this week - The Future of Personalized Start Pages - for my analysis on this.

Screenshots of the google.com promotion and World Cup modules below. Game on!

p.s. I can't wait for the World Cup to start! I'm a big fan of Brazil, they epitomize the Beautiful Game.

As I've blogged about before, the market has a lot of contenders. They fall into two main groups - The Big Guns (Microsoft's live.com, Google Personalized Homepage, My Yahoo) and The Little Companies (Netvibes, Protopage, PageFlakes, etc). Now, as Mike Arrington noted, the big list of little companies is potentially starting to thin out:

"Well, the inevitable is starting to happen - a few new web startups are starting to close up shop as they find that building an application is a lot easier than getting users to try it out, and keep coming back. Fold.com, an Ajax home page, has folded."

Looking at the Alexa charts, it clearly shows Fold.com (the blue line hugging the horizontal axis) never really got off the ground:

The chart also shows how successful Netvibes has been. This is also obvious from the Netvibes blog, which is chock full of new feature announcements and lots of comments from passionate users.

Pageflakes and Protopage are another couple of contenders which are hanging in there, to use Mike's apt phrase. So what's the business model of these start pages, when all the big guns have their own start pages? Microsoft and Google are seemingly putting a lot of stock into gadgets/widgets. Meanwhile Yahoo is happy enough (for now) to continue to serve the mainstream audience - for which widgets are still a fair way off being user-friendly.

I think there are still a lot of opportunities for the small companies. For example I took a look at Pageflakes' press kit and I was struck by this slide in particular:

It's a little hard to see due to the width limitations of my site, but here's a full-length version. My point here is that Pageflakes, and I'm sure Netvibes and the others too, 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.

One key for the little companies is to persuade external developers to create gadgets/widgets for their platforms. Pageflakes is an open platform, so I think it's got a great chance at succeeding in this strategy - as long as they can sell themselves to that developer ecosystem. It currently claims 50% of their 'flakes' (i.e. gadgets) are created by "Community Developers" and they say this figure is rising. Netvibes is similarly well positioned - arguably better, because it has managed to get such a great user/developer uptake so quickly.

In terms of growing the user base, I thought Peter Cooper made an excellent comment on Techcrunch. After noting that Yahoo will likely keep hold of the mainstream crowd, Peter said:

"If anything’s going to really break through, it’s going to be Google’s (because of their sheer might), or something that appeals to the MySpace/LiveJournal crowd (because of the sheer numbers and the way memes spread on there). I dare say that MySpace could pull it off if they tried."
(emphasis mine)

Peter's right, the MySpace crowd will be highly attractive to start page companies. It's something which may potentially break this market wide open.

The other business model the likes of Netvibes and Pageflakes will pursue is the enterprise market - and maybe even white-labelling. For example I happen to know that one of the small companies mentioned above is exploring options as a 'business portal'. If start pages can integrate office apps like Writely and JotSpot into their pages (which is already happening) and promote that to enterprises - that's potentially a profitable market.

So while it's sad to see companies like Fold.com slip away, I don't think this is any reflection on the market itself for personalized start pages. In fact, I think it's full of opportunities - many of which may not clash with the plans of The Big Guns. And that's why Netvibes and Pageflakes have gotten funding. There is a future in their Personalized Start Pages, as long as they execute well.