Netvibes leading the Widget race
Netvibes looks set to take the lead in the – Highest number of widgets available on you personalized start page – race.
In a statement made by Pierre Chappaz, co CEO at Netvibes, during the Web2 summit in San Fransisco – Netvibes say they are going to integrate the use of Google gadgets, of which there are 1,531 (although it can be discussed as to whether or not some of these qualify as widgets & not just RSS feeds)
Add those to the 391 already available and Netvibes are furlongs ahead of Microsoft’s Live.com with 442 to date. Then there’s the likes of Pageflakes with 120 widgets available, but then again Pageflakes are more community based and maybe less interested in a widget arms race. Afterall how many widgets do you need on your start page?
Netvibes like Pageflakes is a European venture, created by frenchman Tariq Krim, its been online for a year now and has over 7 million users, up 2 million since september. Half of those using Netvibes are in the USA.
November 9th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Usernumbers communicated are based on what metrics? Cookies created? Signups? Visits?
Widgetrace is indeed not the key. By the way – a large percentage of those widgest are merely RSS feed based. The real “need” for those remains questionable.
Good to see that Europe is being a good place to start independent businesses again.
Regards
Ole Brandenburg
November 9th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
That’s a very good point Ole, there are a lot of figures brandied about on the Net, accompanied by little if any, hard factual evidence.
As for the ‘7 million users’ I can can only point you to my source of that information -
“Au fait, nous en avons profité pour annoncer que les Widgets Google tournent maintenant sur Netvibes… qui a dépassé 7 millions d’utilisateurs en Octobre (dont une moitié aux US)”.
This is a direct quote of Pierre Chappaz who is joint CEO along with Tariq Karim over at Netvibes, and was taken from his blog – Kelblog.
When he says ‘users’ I take it to mean, people who have personalized the Netvibes start page and are signed in.
If we can’t believe the CEO’s…
November 10th, 2006 at 9:18 am
I will refrain from commenting here because I think it’s pointless to argue metrics that are obviously misleading.
Hint: Check the number of users who bookmark Pageflakes vs those number of users who bookmark Netvibes (delicious). That gives you some realistic ideas.
Best regards
Ole Brandenburg
November 10th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
I can only point to where the information comes from, as being a ‘hopefully’ reliable source. As I said, if we can’t believe the CEO, who can we believe?
This may be a little naive on my part, I grant you, but I’m not in a position to verify the absolute accuracy of the figures given by Pierre Chappaz on his blog
But then, who is?
Thank you Ole, for your opinions on this subject, sorry if my article disappointed you in some way.
ps: if anyone else has an opinion on this, I would be glad to here from them
November 10th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Not disappointed in your review at all.
Cheers
Ole
November 11th, 2006 at 3:17 am
Ole, I understand that you are a netvibes competitor and that trying to understimate their number of users is part of your job but I don\’t understand your point about delicious.
I checked on the site and Netvibes was saved by 14220 people while Pageflakes was only saved by 3607 users. Would it mean that they have 3 times more people than you? (Btw, I never saw on delicious a site which has been saved by more users than Netvibes)
I really think this method of calculation is stupid because only 8551 saved Google\’s homepage and I don\’t think Netvibes has more users than Google…
November 11th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Thanks for the figures Enrique, I hadn’t got around to looking myself. I did however, ask Pierre Chappaz to comment -
quote “merci Andrew mais je ne me sens pas obligé de répondre, je vous invite a regarder Alexa”
Fair dues I suppose, he’s in San Fransisco covering the Web 2.0 Summit and probably has better to do than answer number-crunching questions from Europe.
The French have an expression ‘On cherche le poile sur l’oeuf’ which means – ‘we are looking for a hair on the egg’ No?
November 26th, 2006 at 1:59 am
[...] With the ability to integrate Google Widgets and Dapper giving the more tech minded among us the possibility to create personal modules, Netvibes appear condemned to keep on growing. [...]
January 16th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I take this opportunity to announce that Webwag will soon put a definitive stop to the Widget race…to be followed.
As of today we are hiring private beta testers for this new feature to be released soon…Please email us at feedback@webwag.com, Subject
January 16th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Thanks for that info Frank,
I’ll be interested to see what you have, hidden up Webwag’s sleeve. Very Intriguing.
I’m pleased you dropped by, good luck with the beta testing.
related article Webwag – alternative to Netvibes
February 6th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
[...] Today Webwag launches Widgets On Demand (WOD) their widget killer application as announced by Webwag’s founder Franck Poisson on a comment to an earlier post here on quoi9. I’ve been having a look at it over the weekend and its quite nifty really. We’ve recently seen Pageflakes proposing ‘widgets to take-out’. Then there was Netvibes with ‘lend us your google gadgets’ and now we’ve got ‘if you like it, just cut it out‘. Because that is how simple WOD makes it to change, just about anything on a web page, into a widget and bung it on you Webwag portal. [...]