That’s how Tariq Krim likes to call his great aggregator. When a French Web entrepreneur has full page coverage in the Economist, this must say something about his business ideas.
What is NetVibes?
NetVibes is the great proof of concept of Web 2.0. An “aggregator<, which enables you to select the information you like, your own personalised homepage, composed from an aggregation of data feeds (RSS). For instance, my home page includes:
- To do list
- Calendar
- Gmail inbox
- Business and sport news
- Weather bulletins
- FTP service
- ZN blog entries
So now the culture is changing, companies should stop their race to spam you all the time, and provide qualitative information that will win a space on your home page.
Why Switzerland when it is a French company?
Unlike its competitors (Google, Yahoo, MSN), Netvibes is neutral, i.e. it does not try to push any of its own products (they have just the one). It is not even intrusive on your desktop, since you can only access it via your browser. That’s why it grew so fast and consistently.
Success figures
15.000 people registered on the launch day in September 2005, now it is a community of more than 12 million people across the 5 continents. A great entrepreneur in the US way, but not yet quite the US guru performer…
