Written on August 4, 2008 – 6:03 pm Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
Established blogs like ReadWriteWeb and Techcrunch proudly show a Feedburner chicklet that displays the sites popularity. But beware – since people are more likely to subscribe to a site with a bigger amount of readers, some sites manipulate the counter.
Every once and a while co-editor Patrick and I stumble on a shady looking website with a ton of readers. That made us wonder whether Feedburner is hackable. I’ve sacrificed my personal blog for a hacking experiment and the result; faking your subscriber count IS possible!
We found an easy way to hack Feedburner (Not the obvious hack that simply steals a chicklet from a popular site). Looking at the subscriber count at some sites, we’re not the first ones who found out, but we are the first ones to write it down. All it takes is an OPML file, a Netvibes Universe, and a good night’s sleep.
EDIT: While the hack still works, I am happy to tell you that Google and Netvibes are working on a solution to the problem. Steve Olechowski, co-founder Feedburner mailed me and said: “These things happen occasionally and are usually fixed in a couple of days”, he added that the feedburner counts do not influence advertisement measurement. Franck Mahon from Netvibes said: “We are working on a fix to filter out in the reporting the duplicates while still allowing people to add several instances of the widget to their startpage.” When things get fixed, it would be interesting to see the differences on some sites.
How to manipulate your Feedburner subscribers in two minutes
Moral of the story is: everybody can have a lot of Feedburner readers, which makes the service questionable as a measurement of performance. It’s up to Google/Feedburner to fix things up.
Once they do this, it will be very interesting to see which blogs suddenly lose a bunch of subscribers…
I hope you like that post!
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Written on July 1, 2008 – 12:52 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
While the Netvibes blog still triumphs the neat integration with Google Search, TechCrunch reports that a new - and more exciting - feature has launched. It’s called Buzz and it adds Digg, Mixx, Reddit and Yahoo - uhm - Buzz to its impressive list of competitors (featuring iGoogle and MyAOL). In case you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a “star” function in Netvibes, with which you can highlight your favorite articles. Buzz will track which articles are starred most - by your friends or everyone - and by doing this, gives a Digg-like overview of the Web 2.0’s most favorite articles.
My first thought was: yet another sharing tool. But then I realized that Netvibes might become an “starring overlay” for all your content, as the little star is depicted in YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, RSS, and almost every other content widget you can come up with. So instead of turning tweets in a Twitter fav, starring articles on Google Reader and appreciating Digg articles by digging them, you just have one tool to manage all your highlight needs.
Before this scenario becomes reailty, Netvibes Buzz has to come a long way. It’s still in development and the numbers on the frontpage aren’t that impressive.
Written on June 9, 2008 – 10:55 am Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
All the German, Swiss, Austrian, Polish, Croatian, Portuguese readers of The Next Web Blog are probably pretty wound up already, Euro 2008 has begun! Now the Dutch, like me, get excited as well, since we have to face the Italians tonight. So please forgive your blogger to express his state of anxiousness with a blog post about this football highlight of the year (don’t even think of the word soccer, my dear American readers. And yes, it’s like the Superbowl). Several services offer ways to keep you up to date about the championship.
Google has made a real effort for its European customers. Besides from showing a special football Doodle, the search giant also developed a special OneBox. Everybody who uses a localized version of one the participating countries can use some handy shortcuts. Whenever you type in ‘euro 2008′, you’ll get info about the upcoming matches. And there’s ‘euro 2008 country_name‘ for the latest scores of your favorite team. I’ve saved the best for last though, as I haven’t mentioned the Euro 2008 Google map yet.
Four of my friends aren’t tech bloggers, so they actually have spare time. They’ve used it to travel to Switzerland to get pissed while wearing an orange outfit. I’m pretty sure they’ve used the handy map Google and transit authorities SBB and VBZ of Switzerland and OBB of Austria have made. So that even after a few beers, my friends still find the way to their hotel or the stadium. If that isn’t enough, Google Maps also showcases the match results and other statistics.
And then there’s Netvibes. Being an important European start-up, you can’t ignore this wave of football news and craziness. The Paris-based team has written a blog post in which they tell their users how to keep track of all the essential football news. There’s a “tailor made” Euro 2008 widget which functions as a score board and some news sites offer special football feeds.
So now your online life is all adapted to the football event, all you need now are some beers, friends, and a tv-set.
Oh, there’s actually one more thing I have to share with you. Follow the Twitter discussions! They’re really funny, especially since some people really think they know a lot about football. Use Summize to track them down.
Written on June 6, 2008 – 5:01 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Netvibes’ chief architect François Hodierne announced the opening of netvibes.org, a website dedicated to Netvibes’ Open Source projects: “By giving away our technology, we hope to foster innovations in the widget and personal-page space, and launch a discussion about their wide implementation.” Netvibes widgets are based on UWA, the Netvibes Universal Widget API. ‘Universal’ since UWA-based widgets run on any platform that supports common Web standards (HTML/JavaScript/CSS). That means iGoogle too.
Netvibes.org is basically a sneak-preview of what’s really coming as the Netvibes developers need some more feedback before the project officially launches. Developers who want to give UWA a try, can work on three projects now:
The UWA JavaScript Runtime: JavaScript libraries that make it possible to run UWA widgets
The PHP Exposition libraries: make it possible to parse and compile UWA widgets
The Exposition widget server: makes it possible to serve widgets to users, notably within an iframe.
I love the paradox of open source. Netvibes says it “gives away” their technology, yet they will probably never turn the personalized homepage into a open source project. Thus what Netvibes (and most other web companies do), is giving away little pieces of the technology - almost everything but the core technology -, so more service-related widgets will flood the web. That gives them a) a better image and b) more functionality.
Written on June 5, 2008 – 8:00 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
One of the 24 start-ups that presented at The Next Web Conference was Paris-based Goojet. Founder Cedric Giorgi told the audience that his service allows you to carry your desktop life with you on your phone. Even if it’s not a smart phone or any other fancy device. Two weeks later, he commented on this blog as only a Frenchman can: “Goojet kind of transforms any phone into an iPhone”.
Scoble interviewing Giorgi at The Next Web
I wouldn’t want to go that far, and not just because the UI of Goojet isn’t that pretty. Indeed the service offers widgets - named Goojets - which you can easily drag ‘n’ drop. But on the test phone I’ve used, a Nokia 6220, loading a widget takes a while. But maybe that’s not a fair comparison. After all, the 6220 wasn’t developed for such sophisticated usage. And the idea behin Goojet is really good - so good that they won the Le Web 3 start-up competition. And last but not least, the 20-people Goojet team has made some major improvements. The new version launched today.
The developers - based in Toulouse and Paris - have rewritten the goojets from XML to HTML, which improves the compatibility with other web services. So during the last weeks, the goojeters - people creating goojets - were busy making hundreds of services available like:
a webcam goojet
a goojet to send messages to a Nabaztag
a goojet for following the results of the Euro 2008
The design also got a touch-up, yet it still doesn’t look like the next big thing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to use, but it’s not eye-candy like the Netvibes widgets.
Which reminds me of a post by TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher. When Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim stepped down on May 29, the company announced to start working on mobile widgets. Mike immediately thought of Goojet, would a heated battle between these Parisian two start-ups start?
I asked Giorgi whether he’s worried about this. He replied: “Goojet is much more than mobile widgets. It’s a solution, based on widgets, to use the mobile web. Secondly, the mobile phone, even if there is some convergence, is a specific media. Goojet has been focusing on mobile use since the beginning. It’s challenge to start on the web and then adapt to mobile. And thirdly, it’s really good to see other actors in the mobile widget market. It means there’s a need, a thing to do, and this shows Goojet is heading in the right direction”.
Although Giorgi has a point when it comes to Netvibes having to adapt to mobile, he secretly might be worried. Netvibes has several million users. If only ten percent of them would give Netvibes’ mobile version a try, the user base of Netvibes would be higher than Goojets in just a few weeks. But hey, in the end, Giorgi and his team shouldn’t worry about that. They should just keep on doing what they’re doing now: improving the service with a lot of passion and commitment.
Written on May 29, 2008 – 4:10 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last night, TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld reported that Netvibes founder Tariq Krim is stepping down as CEO to work on a “new project”. “My role was to transfer Netvibes from a personal start page into a widget platform”, Krim told Schonfeld. He will remain on the board of the company and will also stay a non-executive strategic adviser. Right after the article was published, the first rumors buzzed around the web. I’ve emailed Krim to get some more background.
Krim pitching Ginger to us in his (now former) office
Krim told TechCrunch that the technical foundation for Netvibes was completed with the recent release of Ginger, the latest version that gave the site a social flavor. Several bloggers didn’t take this for granted and wrote that Krim was pushed aside by the VC’s. In an email to me, he replied to this rumors: “No, everything is fine for me. The company makes revenue and can now enter the growth stage.”
Krim advised me to contact the new Netvibes CEO, former COO Freddy Mini from San Francisco. Mini is probably happy with his new job, but the vibe in the blogosphere might temper his enthusiasm. Schonfeld called the fight of Netvibes against iGoogle and MyYahoo a “losing battle“, and some people have already linked Netvibes to the deadpool.
Mini: “They’re overreacting. Google has a great help from its highly popular search service but fortunately we have a sustainable revenue model based on both our premium Universe offer - that inserts a fully customized Netvibes with a partner site - and our sponsored placements for paid distribution of widgets. Ginger has just open to everyone at the end of April from which we expect growth in new users and visits per month.”
“All in all”, Mini writes, “the new version now available and business model is selling. I don’t think we are near any deadpool”.
The vibe at Netvibes doesn’t seem pessimistic at all. The executives even have the guts to make some bold strategic decisions. On Friday, the company will make all the technology around the widget platform open source. They’re also working on turning widgets into mobile applications. Or are these startegic decision really just moves made out of desperation?
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”.
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 August 4, 2008 – 6:03 pm
Written on July 1, 2008 – 12:52 pm
Google has made a real effort for its European customers. Besides from showing a special football Doodle, the search giant also 
And then there’s Netvibes. Being an important European start-up, you can’t ignore this wave of football news and craziness. The Paris-based team has written a 
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