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?
I hope you like that post!
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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…
Written on February 4, 2008 – 3:03 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last Saturday we had drinks with founder and CEO of Netvibes Tariq Krim. During a great party in Amsterdam’s hippest club Jimmy Woo, he promised us - kind as he is - 100 private invites for the beta version of ginger. 5,000 users already tested the social adventure of the personalized startpage service, now it’s time for the next group. We gladly accepted Tariq’s offer because, dear reader, even during a party we’re thinking of you.
Most important new functions of ginger are the ‘My Universe‘ option and the possibility to follow your friends.
So head to ginger.netvibes.com and enter this code: NEXTWEBBLOG. If you want to express your thankfulness in any way, please feel free to stumble our blog or press the ‘digg this’ button. In the mean time, we’ll look for new ways to express our love to you.
Written on December 8, 2007 – 2:17 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Just a few days from the private beta launch during Le Web 3 in the beautiful city of Paris, Netvibes is teasing its audience with some new screenshots of their social adventure: ginger. Tariq Krim published a blog post today, describing the new features that will make it possible to involve your friends in your personalized start page.
It can basically be summarized in three steps:
- import your friends from other social networks, such as Facebook;
- track what widgets they’re adding, photos and videos they’re watching;
- create your universe, and show the world your social networks, Flickr photos and Twitter updates.
A personal universe can be an outcome for anybody who is not blogging, or capable of building his/ hers own homepage. Since it will be a place where you can present your on line identity in a rather spectacular way.
Krim promises us he’ll keep revealing more from ginger the coming days. If anything revolutionary happens, we’ll let you know. Moreover, we’ll travel to Paris to attend Le Web 3 and cover, amongst other interesting events, the beta launch of ginger.
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