As the number of real-time feeds available around the web has rapidly grown over recent months with the rise of real-time publishing technologies, the big question has been: when will a major feed reader consume these feeds? Google Reader may be too complex and too slow-moving to be first; that Netvibes is going to steal the show should be no surprise.

Code named Wasabi, the version will go into private beta later this week and will launch to the public at December's Le Web conference in Paris, where the theme of the event is the real-time web.

Support for real-time feeds has so far been much stronger on the publisher side than the consumer technology side. With blog publishing services WordPress, Blogger and Typepad all adding Pubsubhubbub or RSSCloud feeds to their offerings, there are now hundreds of millions of real-time feeds available in those two formats. So far only a few small feed readers have begun consuming these feeds; RSSCloud developer Dave Winer's own River2, a complex but customizable desktop feed reader, and LazyFeed, a simple but enjoyable feed-powered discovery engine, have turned on full support for real-time feeds. Real time didn't come up in interviews this week with the creators of NetNewsWire and FeedDemon.

Google Reader implemented very limited support for PubSubHubbub in August, just pushing a Hubbub feed of "shared items" from Reader to the now-Facebook owned FriendFeed. In that case Google Reader was playing the part of the publisher and FriendFeed was the reader. Google's Brad Fitzpatrick has told us that when PubSubHubbub support allowed FriendFeed to wait for updates from Reader, instead of polling regularly to check for updates, traffic between the two services was cut by 85%.

From decreased server costs to an improved experience for users to increased time-on-site, the benefits of real-time feeds can be many. Can Netvibes pull off integration of real-time feeds into its existing dashboard product? Some developers experimenting with these new real-time feeds elsewhere have reported stumbling blocks in the process, and Netvibes hasn't had a perfect record of service for users in all locations around the world, either. Long caching of feeds has been an issue for Netvibes, though, and this update will cut down substantially on the delays that users see after feeds of interest have published new content.

Invitations to the private beta will roll out later this week, giving a few hundred users an opportunity to see the new Netvibes for themselves.

The Widget Wishlist is a section of Netvibes Labs that accepts suggestions for new widgets and allows other Labs users to vote on the wishes they think have the most potential. After voting (with or without a comment), there is a button to move to another wish at random. The wishlist page also maintains a list of the top ten most popular wishes, and how many people have voted them up and down. Finally, there is an input box to make up to three 160-character wishes (per day according to the Netvibes blog).

Projects

• Theme Designer: This is a GUI-based tool that lets you choose the colors and background image for your private Netvibes page, and it generates and applies the XML theme automatically. Easy.
• Tag Cloud: This tool analyzes the content on your Netvibes page and generates a tag cloud. From this cloud you can click on words that interest you and a search will be made for widgets that use the specified keyword. One click gets that widget on your page. Easy.
• Spring Cleaning: This is especially good for those folks who have had a lot of feed widgets on their Netvibes page, and need help weeding out the old stuff. Feeds are placed in one of four categories: Never read, 30 days, 6 months, and 1 year. Then, with a couple of clicks, you can archive the feeds you no longer read. Easy.

Summary

So there's a lot of easy already happening here. The initial Netvibes Labs tools are fairly simple and straightforward, the most complex tool being the theme designer (which actually has a bug we found - we couldn't add a background image using Firefox). But we're guessing that's how these labs tools will probably be developed; precise, simple tools to address a certain issue or need in the Netvibes community. So far, we like what we are seeing.

After making that post, we received a torrent of feedback, most of which was very negative. I also spoke to Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini and he shared with me some facts, figures and perspective from within the company. Based on that conversation I want to revise my statements about Netvibes and to apologize for the angry, caustic tone I took in the post.

But is Netvibes OK?

CEO Freddy Mini explained that the start page paradigm hasn't really taken off beyond the early adopter set but remains useful as a driver for sales of the company's new enterprise and "branded portal" offerings. The company also has enough users that "cost per install" of branded widgets is a meaningful source of revenue.

I expressed disappointment that the customizable start page hasn't taken the world by storm and Mini said he shared that feeling. I believe that a move away from the DIY start page and toward brand advertisers is a move away from the authenticity of Web 2.0's original vision. Even the language of "brands" is nauseating; every time an online tool succumbs to a future as a "service for brands," a kitten somewhere on earth drops dead.

Since starting to offer enterprise and branded products, though, Mini says that Netvibes increased its revenue 4X in the last 3 quarters of 2008. As a writer focused on consumer tech, that business wasn't evident to me and I didn't think much about it. The company also cut its burn rate (expenses) by 50% during the same period.

Is Netvibes pinching pennies at the expense of functionality and stability? Mini said that the recent problems were attributable to a load balancer that was replaced yesterday, in part because of our post alleging a connection between downtime and the health of the company. Whether or not the company is making sufficient investment in infrastructure is unclear; presumably time will tell. It's also easy to imagine resources being shifted whole-scale into sales while the legacy (free) product gets put on life support. I'm sure the start page product helps with some sales, but I presume that enterprise and marketing sales people help a lot more.

Netvibes raised 12m Euros in August of 2006 and hasn't raised any more money since then. Mini says that while other companies are cutting staff, he's adding people - specifically sales people targeting brand customers in the US and Europe.

I'm not entirely convinced how well the current path is going to serve Netvibes, but Mini says its enterprise product is far less expensive than competitors like IBM - so maybe they can pull it off. I hope so because I want to keep using the company's start page product. Not because it's free, but because it's a very good product.

The long and short of it is that it appears I was wrong - Netvibes is not going down the tubes. At the same time, I'm not entirely convinced that all is well at Netvibes and I am disappointed about the move away from the original vision and towards a brand-centric direction for the company.

What do readers think about Netvibes these days?

Update: Please see our follow up post on this topic - I Was Wrong; Netvibes is Not Going Down The Tubes.

Start-pages are highly customizable services that display RSS feeds and lots of other little tools inside widgets on a page. The most successful have been MyYahoo and iGoogle. There used to be a horde of startups trying to enter this market but the energy is largely gone. When your startpage doesn't load, your personal entry point into the web has failed you and it can really put a damper on your day. That's where Netvibes is right now. Update: The site is back up again. If you want to export your feeds and try one of the many alternatives, now's your chance. It turns out though that Netvibes still has a lot of very happy users, as you can see in the comments. We're glad to hear it and despite our deep frustration and worries that the company isn't doing well - we really hope we're wrong.

In the meantime, the service is just failing to load altogether again today. Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini said last month that the company's service provider has had repeated problems supporting users on the West Coast of the US, but we've tested it from all over the US and are seeing the same problems.

It's enough to make you take your OPML file and go home. That's a real loss because Netvibes is probably the best in class among start-pages, in terms of features. It works in Firefox and Safari, has an excellent mobile version and just feels more powerful than the alternatives.

Unfortunately, business can't be too good at Netvibes. The company's business model revolves around sponsored widgets, search ads and a handful of sponsored pages like Ogilvy PR's The Daily Influence. (That page is also currently down.)

We'd guess that none of those monetization plans are working out as well as the company hoped they would. The company may soon suffer a fate similar to that of rival Pageflakes, which was recently acquired by Live Universe. Live Universe was founded by one of the MySpace founders, Brad Greenspan, and that company is now where washed-up content goes when it is put out to the pasture of remnant bulk advertising.

We sure hope you can get it together Netvibes. We know you had dreams of tens or hundreds of millions of people happily building their own little corner of the web, assembling and sharing topical collections of pages and making Netvibes the center of their online worlds. Those dreams may not have worked out so far, but we'd still appreciate it if your damn site would load for those of us who have put it at the center of our time online.

The first time you use this feature, you have to authenticate with each of the social networks. Once configured, links are published to your Facebook News Feed and to your Twitter stream. (Note: Facebook Connect only works on Firefox at present). An option to email items instead is also provided.

The individual articles found in RSS feeds also have a sharing option which is activated by clicking on a yellow star next to the word "share." This feature lets you save articles with an optional note for later reading . The saved articles are placed in your private activities section.

It is this last feature that has Netvibes' users up in arms. Because the star and link reside on a separate line beneath the article headline and introductory text, it takes up valuable screen real estate which impacts the number of entries which can be displayed on a page. Out of 26 some comments (at time of writing) on the Netvibes blog, a surprising majority of them (25) were against the yellow star for this very reason. Everyone was requesting that this feature be optional, so they could shut it off.

Although 25 people aren't the entire Netvibes user base, they are a good representative of the most enthusiastic of Netvibes users - the ones who take the time to read and respond to the company blog entries. In this case, we think they may have a point. Hopefully Netvibes will take this into consideration and make some tweaks.

However, the user outrage issue shouldn't overshadow the big news of the day: a Facebook Connect sighting in the wild! We just love those. After Netvibes fixes the above issue, the new sharing features are likely to become popular ways to make the entire Netvibes experience more social and fun.

YourMinis was a start-page service like no other, but its feature richness and happy users fall victim to the cold business logic that so many cool startups face after being acquired. YourMinis is now primarily used to power advertising widgets for AOL, a practice that will continue but pales in comparison to the beautiful topical pages its users built with the full service over the last several years.

As several upset users pointed out in the blog post announcing the service's closure, though, none of these services are quite like YourMinis. The Flash interface, while disliked by some critics as all things Flash are, allowed fans greater flexibility in visual design.

Few if any of the many start-page startups have succeeded in their vision of becoming mini-publishing houses for users building content aggregation pages that are then shared with the world. See our interview last year with Dan Cohen, who has lead the team at Pageflakes, iGoogle and MyYahoo, for a great look into the start-page world.

All too often, this is how it goes in startup land. You fall in love with an innovative little service, you give it your attention, then it gets scooped up by a big player and everyone is happy until the acquiring company turns it into an ad network for crappy pop music and 3rd rate movies and then shuts down the original service you loved.

If you're addicted to the fringe startup start-page experience, check out recent sites bookmarked "startpage" in Del.icio.us. In between the big guys, you'll find some innovative little players there. The nice thing about RSS services like this is that it's not hard to move at least your reading list from one service to another. The user experience though, as YourMinis users no doubt are aware, is much harder to reproduce.

Update: AOL emailed the following response.

Goowy is not shutting down
yourminis, but has made a decision to close the startpage and remove
some of the functionality of the gallery. Goowy's core focus is creating
widgets and working with developers to create widgets that can live and
work on sites across the Web, including startpages such as iGoogle,
myAOL and Netvibes. By shutting down the yourminis startpage and some
of the functionality of the gallery, Goowy can continue to focus on its
core business -- developing new widgets.

I thought there might be some confusion about yourminis/Goowy shutting
down completely based on the headline of your post, and want to make
sure it's clear that it is just the startpage and gallery functionality.

However, another service that was once exclusively for Google Reader users is expanding to give users a more accurate analysis of what's popular on the web. Today, ReadBurner announced a partnership with the personalized homepage service Netvibes.

The new partnership will allow ReadBurner to analyze and aggregate the activity streams of Netvibes users to incorporate their shared items into ReadBurner. To get started, Netvibes users can head to ReadBurner's "Add A Feed" page and insert their Netvibes username.

Netvibes users can expect their shared items to start appearing in ReadBurner approximately 30 minutes after adding their account. Only the 10 most recent shared items will be immediately pulled in. However, there are plans to expand this to include the latest 30 items. While there will be no counter to display how many times an item was shared via Google Reader versus Netvibes, Netvibes users will be listed in the "Shared by" section in green to better separate the services.

Partnership Responses

It seems that to be the first service to publicly utilize the new APIs for the Netvibes Ginger platform. With the partnership being made possible through the upcoming APIs, ReadBurner's CEO Adam Ostrow has only positive words about working with Netvibes:

Netvibes Ginger is a revolutionary product that truly makes the start page a social experience. We are thrilled to be working with Netvibes to allow their millions of users to help us determine the most important content on the Web in a completely transparent and opt-in way.

VP Product Development of Netvibes, Franck Mahon, was also enthusiastic about partnering with ReadBurner:

We are very focused on making it easy for our users to share their favorite content with their friends or the public. It has really been a pleasure to partner with ReadBurner in testing our APIs and we're really excited about opening Netvibes Ginger activities streams to external applications.

What's in the Future?

There are other services that allow users to share items that have yet to be included in RSS aggregation. Are talks brewing? We sure hope so. We'd love to see shared items from RSS readers such as FeedDemon and the controversial Shftyr included in the aggregation for more accurate statistics and web analysis. For now, users can look forward to more accurate statistics about an item's popularity via ReadBurner's homepage.

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.

Mark Zuckerberg's decision to make a wall street style news feed the central feature of the home page and the profile page at Facebook has been a huge reason for its recent success (and might also be the source of its growing pains)... And its been imitated all over the place these days.

Here at Read/WriteWeb, Marshall's year in review post on RSS included:

Facebook Introduced Millions of People to Syndication - No single event probably came close to the impact of Facebook's explosion in popularity in terms of popularizing the concept of syndication and feeds..."

In this post, I'll highlight why I find this so significant.

Significant Feeds in Marketplace

Facebook did lead the social networks with their News Feed. Initially, this was met by some resistance from the community (see these three Facebook Blog posts). However, eventually Facebook users did seem to calm down about this and the News Feed became one of the site's most oft-copied features. Followers include:

• Google Open Social Attention Streams (already included in Plaxo Pulse)
• MySpace Friends Updates
• Netvibes Activities (part of Ginger Release - see video below)


• LinkedIn Network Updates

Why is this significant?

In the introduction, I stated how bullish I was on the trend toward more and more applications using this feed style around users' activity. I'd like to highlight three of the reasons I believe this is such a good trend:

1. Improves Efficiency Using the Social Network
2. Increases Engagement with Site
3. Increases Awareness of Attention Silos

Improves Efficiency Using the Social Network

If you've used RSS to read content, you're certainly aware how efficient it can make you when consuming a lot of information. The paradigm lends itself to scanning a lot of information quickly and focusing on the most important content. I believe these feeds actually allow social network users to see the same benefit.

Increases Engagement with Site

Research has shown RSS are more engaged then other website visitors. It certainly would be interesting to repeat the research with feeds from social sites, but intuitively I believe these feeds have also increased engagement with these social networks. This theory is also validated by the importance thought leaders are placing on news feed optimization, such as Justin Smith and Dave McClure.

Increases Awareness of Attention Silos

The attention economy has been a big issue on the web for some time, but currently the data is still locked up in attention silos. (See an overview here by Alex Iskold.) Interestingly, the feeds these applications create do a great job educating users on the information being stored about them. All you have to do is look at the initial reaction the Facebook community had to the news feed introduction. It will be interesting to see if users ask to take their personal mini-feeds (attention) with them.

Conclusion

There certainly are features I'd like to see each of these feeds adopt. However, I believe the paradigm is a good one and the trend toward more social networks applying it is positive. Let me know if the comments below if you are equally optimistic.

Do you see the similarities between Moby Dick and the Mountain View company? A Google OS and Web-based Office has been rumored for so long now, it's almost become a myth. And like Ishmael, most of us aren't sure whether the beast is good or evil. 

I mention all this in response to Jason Calacanis' excellent post entitled CES analysis: Why I know Google will do an office suite and a desktop OS in 2006. Jason predicted that Google will:

"a. launch calendar and office suite in the next six months.
b. by the end of the year they will come out with a Linux-based OS and offer it for free to PC makers. Those PC makers will love Google for giving them a free OS and Google will love extending the reach of their money maker: google Adsense."

He backed those predictions up with some great logic and deduction. As did Jason Kottke when he came out with his GoogleOS post back in August. One can't deny the pure logic of the two Jasons. GoogleOS? Sure, it's a shoo-in. Google has to do it, otherwise Microsoft wins with Windows and MS Office.

So what's the hold-up? We all suspect Google is up to something. As Ben Barren noted: "What is all that headcount on Firefox and OpenOffice really doing we wonder?" Google Pack, which is basically a cobbled-together collection of default applications for a desktop, is perhaps a sign of things to come. Nick Carr thinks it may be a trojan horse, allowing Google to automatically update software on users PCs - thus routing around Microsoft's control of the OS. 

It remains to be seen whether Google Pack lives up to its mythical Greek status, but I'll come right out and say that I agree with Jason's conclusion that Google will release an OS and Office suite by the end of this year. Disclaimer: I'm a romantic at heart and I believe in the myth of the White Whale.

"And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.

With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift, the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's reappearance."
Herman Melville: Moby Dick - Chapter cxxxiii - THE CHASE - FIRST DAY

]]>Sponsor

]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_os_moby.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_os_moby.php Google Mon, 09 Jan 2006 04:05:46 -0800 Richard MacManus There's been a ton of CES news to digest these past few days, especially in the past 12 or so hours. Yahoo released Go and CEO Terry Semel made a speech at CES; Google released Google Pack, Google Video Player and Google Video Store; Larry Page did a speech at CES. As I trawled through all the news - thanks in particular to Engadget and PaidContent for the excellent coverage - I tried to distil some of the themes emerging. Here's a starter for 10, which I'd love to get peoples comments on...

Themes for Internet companies hitting the media market in 2006:

• Device connectivity - from the PC to mobile to television sets to gaming machines to talking refrigerators (OK, that last one has been thankfully absent from CES talk!). It's obvious that connecting all these devices together, seamlessly and in a user-friendly way, is a key goal for Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, eBay/Skype and others.
• Partnerships - we've seen a slew of partnerships announced at CES between Internet companies and a) hardware makers, b) media content companies, and c) other software companies. Microsoft and Palm, Microsoft and MTV, Yahoo and Nokia, Yahoo and Cingular and AT&T, Skype and Philips, Skype and NETGEAR, Google and CBS, Google and Norton, ... the list goes on and we'll see a LOT more of this in 2006. Partnerships are critical in this new Internet-media hybrid world. Yahoo's even talking about partnering with users: "Yahoo is not going to make gadgets. We're here to partner with you." [source: Engadget]
• Internet as the delivery vehicle. I thought this quote from Terry Semel captured the current era of the Web perfectly: "We think the Internet isn't a Web page anymore, it's a vehicle for delivering ... it's about connecting the devices that all of you are manufacturing." [source: Engadget]
• Video, TV, more video: we are seeing a lot of action amongst the big Internet companies in video. Google's new video offerings, a player and a store; Yahoo's promised tv-watching revolution in the shape of Yahoo! Go; Microsoft talking up Xbox 360 as a powerful application for high-definition television. eBay has a trump card too, with Skype video. Broadband has finally come to the party circa 2005/06, such that video delivered over the Web is now a reality that all the bigcos will exploit.
• Finally action in the mobile Web? I put a question mark over that, because there's still a lot of water to go under the product development bridge as far as mobile products are concerned. But Yahoo made some interesting noises with Go, and Microsoft and Google discussed mobile a lot at CES too. But the biggest action in mobile this week came from Skype, with a number of hardware partnerships announced at CES.

These are just the themes for Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and eBay/Skype - I can't wait to see what Apple comes out with at Macworld next week. The rumor of the moment is that Apple will release a new application called iWeb, said to be a Web design application with "easy drag-and-drop capability for a variety of Web-optimized content and media types."

So what do you think - have I covered the main themes of Internet companies at CES? Feel free to add your thoughts below.

]]>Sponsor

]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/main_themes_of.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/main_themes_of.php CES 2006 Fri, 06 Jan 2006 20:19:26 -0800 Richard MacManus Yahoo! Go is being advertised as "a new suite of products and services for your PC, mobile phone and even your TV". The main aim is to enable people to connect with their content (e.g. email, photos, music) across a range of devices. 

Right now the Go product range is limited. Upon clicking the "Get Started Now" button I got two "coming soon" notices and a limited availability mobile offering. Here's the deal at this point in time:

- The Go Desktop is "coming soon" and only konfabulator widgets are available now.

- Yahoo! Go TV is also "coming soon" and will only be available for Windows XP PCs.

- So that just leaves mobile -- and that's available only on "select Nokia Series 60 handsets."

The 'How It Works' was intriguing. The PC offering appears to be a desktop dashboard with fold-out panes. The email part of it is being promoted as a purely desktop app: "You can manage your mail without ever opening a browser." The Yahoo 360, IM and My Web 2.0 tie-ins seem to be all part of a desktop appliance - Yahoo's equivalent of the Google Desktop perhaps?

The TV part will be interesting to track, mainly because video and TV Internet integration is all the rage right now - with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and a host of others talking it up at CES. Yahoo is keeping the hype at a red hot level with Go, promising it'll "change the way you watch TV." It says: "By accessing Yahoo! services directly on your TV, you can have a more personalized viewing experience." One interesting feature is that Flickr will be featured in this product. There's also the expected music and video offerings.

Mobile is the unknown quantity here, because who knows if it'll be deployed outside the US and how effective the service will be. One interesting feature is "voice instant messages", which is Yahoo Messenger on your mobile. It also has email via mobile phone.

Paidcontent.org has listed all the product guff and has more links. And expect Yahoo CEO Terry Semel to talk about this at length in his CES speech tomorrow.

Summary

At first glance, Yahoo! Go seems like a decent attempt to create a kind of portal environment that will extend across the PC, TV and mobile. However at this stage it also seems to be mostly vapourware, with not much actual product to show. But then so is Microsoft's Vista at this time... So one key thing that I hope Semel will reveal tomorrow is the timeframe for when each part of Go will be released.

It also worries me that the TV part is limited to Windows XP PCs and mobile will be limited in terms of handsets and presumably carriers. That's the lay of the land with Internet media in 2006 though, with partnerships being the prime currency in this environment.

Of course the proof will be in the pudding, so I look forward to trying the Go product range out in future - when it's ready to, er, go.

Update: The official press release is out now and it touts Go as a 'Beyond the Browser' experience: "Yahoo! Go allows us to free the best of what the Internet has to offer from the confines of the browser and provides consumers fast and easy access to the essential products and services they know and love..."

Which begs the question - how big a part will web browsers play in this new media world?

]]>Sponsor

]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_go_a_port.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_go_a_port.php Rich Media Fri, 06 Jan 2006 05:01:48 -0800 Richard MacManus