Man about town Om Malik bumped
into Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim at the The Future of Web Apps conference in San
Francisco. Tariq told Om that Netvibes now has 5 million users, so naturally he is very
optimistic of its future. Currently on Read/WriteWeb we’re running a poll asking whether
independent Personalized Start Pages (such as Netvibes, Pageflakes and Webwag) have a
viable future as profitable businesses. The results so far have just 51% of respondents
saying yes, start pages do have a future. 47% think no, they will go the way of the dot
coms. 2% admitted they don’t know what start pages are. The poll is still open, so have
your say here:
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.
