Netvibes Launches Corporate Startpages - Will Companies Go For It?
Netvibes, the French startpage near the top of the startpage market, is launching a new service this morning called Netvibes Premium Universes. The service allows companies to offer Netvibes functionality (reading feeds …
Context & Ripple Effects
Netvibes has spent 2007 assembling the plumbing for this move: it opened up widget development with the Universal Widget API in March and shipped the Coriander update on top of it, then absorbed a co-CEO departure in July even as it stayed near the top of the startpage market. Meanwhile telecom operators started building their own — Orange launched a Netvibes/Pageflakes competitor back in May.
Premium Universes is the monetization step: rather than waiting for consumers alone, Netvibes now sells its startpage machinery to companies as a branded product. The open question in the headline — whether companies will buy — matters because it tests whether startpages are a consumer fad or a distributable platform.
First-order effects
- Companies can now deploy Netvibes' feed-reading and widget functionality under their own brand, giving Netvibes a business-to-business revenue line alongside its consumer service.
- The move puts Netvibes in direct competition for corporate accounts with the operator-built startpages that emerged earlier in 2007, notably Orange's May launch.
Second-order effects
- Rival startpage vendors face pressure to match the white-label offering or concede the corporate segment, turning a consumer land-grab into an enterprise feature race.
- Widget developers building on the Universal Widget API gain a new distribution surface: corporate universes would carry their widgets to audiences beyond the consumer startpage base.
Third-order effects
- If corporate buyers adopt it, the startpage category shifts from destination site to licensable personalization layer — the same pattern of consumer products being re-skinned for brands that aggregators like Flux were pursuing by late 2007.
- Personalized startpages become one more contested access surface between content owners and their audiences, alongside portals, widgets, and mobile home screens — a fight Netvibes had already joined with its August iPhone-customized site.
The trend: Consumer startpages are evolving into white-label personalization platforms sold to brands and enterprises, with widget APIs as the enabling technology.