Recently NetVibes, the startup that lets you create a widget-filled customizable homepage, rolled out a free feature allowing users to create widget-based web pages, dubbed Theme Publishing. Ostensibly aimed at users, it also has one eye on potentially charging brands and agencies to create customised home pages.
In other words, Netvibes is trying to monetize itself as fast as possible. To that end it’s also now re-selling its architecture to portals and ISPs which want to let users create customisable home pages.
Germany’s largest portal and ISP, T-Online, has thus now launched launched Meine Seite, a user-personalized, widget-based version of their site powered by Netvibes.
T-Online.de is a subsidiary of Deutch Telekom (which also owns T-Mobile), Germany’s largest ISP, serving some 3.8 billion page views per month. That means Meinte Seite will now reach 37% of all Internet users in Germany, or 15 million monthly unique users. This news follows other partnerships, like that with Rambler.ru (Russia’s largest ISP), Ogilvy, Razorfish and others.
It’s a win for Netvibes, as they attempt to hit profitability later this year. Netvibes has $16 million in backing from Index Ventures and Accel Partners and received seed funding from Neil Rimer, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Chappaz and Martin Varsavsky.
Netvibes’ Theme Publishing is not just aimed at users – it’s aimed at brands and their ad agencies that want to create their own microsites featuring their widgets for social networks and feeds. It’s all part of their attmpt to claw back momentum from copycats like iGoogle. And they are also working on a new realtime feed reader.
you have some typos, it’s “Deutsche Telekom”, not Deutch Telekom, and some lines down “Meine Seite” instead of “Meinte Seite”..
The mistakes mentioned above are still there…
Also you doubled “launched” in “has thus now launched launched Meine Seite”.
It’s a shame that more portals don’t work as well as Netvibes, it’s my homepage and nothing has ever quite matched it despite my efforts to consolidate my services (live.com has some nice features I enjoy). Hopefully Netvibes does well as a result of this and maybe some larger companies could think about adopting their UI and/or tech.
Like some other services it will be possibly buried somewhere in the site. Apart from that, while T-Online is the biggest ISP in German, their site is mostly visited by their more non-tech and non-geek customers. I don´t see there such a big potential …
hmmm, so netvibes got $ 16M funding without knowing how to make money? No stable Business plan? and they got $16 M in funding? hmmm, seems like I’m missing something here. I’m not sure if this is the best way to make money for netvibes
Mike,
Why do you still call netvibes a startup? i mean these people have been in the market for sometime, have exprienced team and lots of cash, maybe the industry needs to reconsider some terms and concepts about the dot come businesses at least
i guess not of a serious point but i am kinda upset because i see everywhere same and same companies are presented where they have not shown any indication of profitability
forgive my aggression
@Concours, I agree with you. It doesn’t make any sense just not to have a business plan. It is not so much about technology but solving people’s problem. If you have a great technology idea, the question is, are people willing to pay for it or is the business model going to be based on freemium?
I don’t see NetVibes recoup the $16 million. I hope the money has not been flushed down into the toilet.
Sarah