Written on April 29, 2008 – 3:48 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
“The most important migration of netvibes history starts today” says Tariq Krim on the Netvibes blog. “We are moving all Netvibes users to Ginger.” The Paris-based personalized start-up service now also offers the new functions - such as your public page, new widgets and a social media flavor - to users who used to work on Coriander. So that means my non-geeky friends have to switch as well.
True party picture with
Tariq Krim last week
Together with Facebook and LinkedIn, Netvibes is one of the few services that my friends who don’t care about the latest developments in the Web 2.0 use. They don’t like Twitter, couldn’t care less about Friendfeed and have never heard of Flickr. Yet when I showed them my Netvibes page, they were immediately convinced about its advantages. I hope the new version doesn’t confuse them, as it offer a wealth of new features. Especially as Netvibes imitations that are totally focused on simple user-interfaces keep popping up. Have a look at Dutch service Symbaloo for example.
Yet I don’t want to get too negative here. Tariq and his team have done a great job. At last week’s Netvibes party he has told me what kind of effort the switch takes - like translating content to 140 different languages -, and that was rather impressive. Moreover, for people who are more web-savvy than average, Ginger is for sure a real improvement. It looks slicker, offers good and public aggregation of all your online content, and if you have the need, you can see what your friends are adding to their “Netvibes Universe”.
So be aware when you open Netvibes today…
I hope you like that post!
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Written on March 4, 2008 – 11:22 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Since the 100 private beta invites we offered you a few weeks ago were gone in less than an hour, lots of you guys will be glad to hear that Netvibes launches the Ginger version today.
Ginger not only looks good, it has several interesting new features. CEO and founder Tariq Krim pitched the service when we were in Paris this month, showing us this:
Your Digital Life All in One Place: less surfing time since almost literary every service offers a Netvibes widget.
Activity Streams: follow your friends to see what they’re adding to their page, like new pictures and videos.
Your Universe: gather everything you want to share with the world on this page. An easy way for not the not so web-savvy people out there to create their own digital space.
Krim in a press release: “Imagine sharing the entire spectrum of your digital life, from your Flickr photos to your Facebook and MySpace friends, YouTube videos, favorite blogs and news sites, widgets and more, all from a single page that your friends and family can easily enjoy and personalize. We’ve gone from the personalized private page to the personalized public Universe.”
So the big picture here is that Netvibes wants to create a community with Ginger. Therefore they’ve made it easy to import friends and contacts from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts. I guess Ginger will be really viral, since a lot of those millions of users won’t be able to resist the temptation of easy friends importing.
Written on January 7, 2008 – 8:55 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Welcome! This is the brand new Next Web Blog! Sure, we’ve blogged for two months already, but things are about to get real now. You may wonder, why on earth did these guys start ANOTHER blog. Well, we think that the best for the web is yet to come. So we think there is room for a media platform that takes a different approach at covering Web 2.0 startups, entrepreneurs and technology.
What will we do different?
- By having mostly entrepreneurs as writers, they will write about start-ups and people in the online industry but also about useful tips, and information about innovative technology. Most of all, they’re looking to inspire other entrepreneurs.
- We will have an international view on news and won’t limit our coverage to just the Valley. We’ll look at local phenomena and analyze why and if they are applicable to other countries and industries. We want to have people from the web industry in as many countries as possible who watch local markets and keep us up-to-date on developments. So-called WebTiprs.
- The Next Web Blog will use all kinds of media. Every Friday we’ll publish an iChat Video interview with founders, entrepreneurs, CEO’s and other interesting people. Interviews with Steve Rubel, Deborah Schultz and Leah Culver are scheduled.
How will the Next Web Blog inspire entrepreneurs?
When interviewing people, we will not only talk about business models and market share, but also about their personal side of the story. Our article about a deal between SellABand and Amazon is a good example: Pim Betist, the founder of SellABand, gave us an interesting inside view on his deal with Amazon. We also interviewed Jimmy Wales about Wikia Search’s background and focused on technology as well as his vision on the Future of Search in general.
We’re looking forward to bringing you inspiring news, telling you about innovative ideas and new technologies and most of all we look forward to writing about you.
Ernst-Jan Pfauth
Editor in Chief The Next Web Blog
Press release in English: click here
Press release in Dutch: click here
Read about our launch on:
TechCrunch
New Blog For European Startup News, From The Guys That Broke Into My House
BlueAce (Dutch)
BlueAce stopt, maar gaat verder op The Next Web
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
