Webwag is a new personalized start page set to be released at the end of this month. According to E-consultancy.com, it's the latest creation of ex-Google France chief Franck Poisson - who says it "will move out of beta on August 28" and be officially announced in early September. More from E-Consultancy.com:
"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.
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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... Read More
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Yossi.com just sold for just 5,000 on Ebay, and it was actually pretty good...I dont know why people still insist on entering this space.
Posted by: EP | August 21, 2006 7:39 PMI agree, there may be a market for independents but I think another independent challenger on the same market is too much. PageFlakes and netvibes were more than enough. This is getting similar to the calendar 2.0 story.
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | August 21, 2006 8:32 PMI've never understood the appeal of start pages. I use the Google Suite (Google as start page, Reader, Gmail...) with bookmarklets. I don't think I would be at any advantage being overwhelemed with too much information on a start page.
I think that the start page trend is all about customization, right? Isn't everyone's customization unique, by definition? Doesn't that mean that it's not really about a "page" so much as it is about a customized APPROACH?
Posted by: The Rub | August 21, 2006 10:48 PMI use Netvibes and I am very happy with it, I luv it !!
Posted by: Luca | August 22, 2006 1:10 AMtry it !
hi there, Thank you for the post and comments.
Webwag is born with a business model, quite a strong difference. Secondly, a major feature will make a strong difference. Last, the Webwag Factory will reward the open-source developpers when they play with your APIs.
All this to be release in September.
Webwag Team
PS: For www.webwag.com Privae Version, the loggin/password are L: wagyour P: webexperience
Posted by: Franck Poisson | August 22, 2006 4:46 AMI think that those of us working in the space often get so excited about new technologies and developments that we forget how the majority of users consume media. On successive weekends, I've watched two members of my family try -- and fail -- to navigate to their email when using browsers that were not their own (which thus had a start page to which neither of these users were accustomed). There are still a LOT of users on the web who use it in an AOL-style experience...they only navigate through search or through promoted links...and they certainly don't know how to change their start pages. Yes, this will change over time, but certainly not within the next three to five years!
Posted by: Cody Simms | August 22, 2006 8:58 AMHello
( Excuse my english, it's bad )
If you understand the french, you can read this interview ( http://blog.accessoweb.info/?2006/07/09/546-interview-franck-poisson-a-propos-de-webwag ) of Frank Poisson about WebWag.
Pleasure
Posted by: philippe | August 22, 2006 12:10 PMWebwag is looking good, i like portions of Netvibes, portions of Pageflakes, and Webwag looks like a good combination of the 2, ell worth a look when it goes live i would say
Posted by: Stephen Mcauley | August 26, 2006 2:28 AM