Netvibes opened up "Ginger" for public beta this week. I've played with the site for a couple of weeks now.
At the basis of the update is a public profile page, that allows you to have a "Universe" for yourself. This is a page with widgets, including ones for myspace, facebook, aim, yahoo messenger etc. In addition, you have the concept of "status" and "friends" so you can leave messages for people on the public page.
It's good, and has some nice features to it. The widgets are nicely done, the presentation of the pages feels "new" and feature rich. Like My Yahoo, widgets are selected from the top of the page and no separate gallery to search for (nice - it feels integrated).
One confusion is the cross between your private page and public page in edit mode - it feels a little disjoined.
Here's some recommendations I would make:
- Many of these sites now make it hard for a user to put a page together. It's very much manual work. For example, in Netvibes case to create my facebook badge, I have to go to facebook, find the badge page, then cut and paste it into netvibes widget. It's like 5 steps, at which point it feels like alot of work. For mass market, these things need to be "0 or 1 click" actions. Ask "What are your 5 social networks", have the user select, then create the page. They can customize further after.
- Make it easy to select fun themes. People love to customize the look and feel.
- Make the Facebook and MySpace widgets "sing". Connecting to other social networks is key for this kind of aggregation, so make these features look great.
Give it a try.
At the basis of the update is a public profile page, that allows you to have a "Universe" for yourself. This is a page with widgets, including ones for myspace, facebook, aim, yahoo messenger etc. In addition, you have the concept of "status" and "friends" so you can leave messages for people on the public page.
It's good, and has some nice features to it. The widgets are nicely done, the presentation of the pages feels "new" and feature rich. Like My Yahoo, widgets are selected from the top of the page and no separate gallery to search for (nice - it feels integrated).
One confusion is the cross between your private page and public page in edit mode - it feels a little disjoined.
Here's some recommendations I would make:
- Many of these sites now make it hard for a user to put a page together. It's very much manual work. For example, in Netvibes case to create my facebook badge, I have to go to facebook, find the badge page, then cut and paste it into netvibes widget. It's like 5 steps, at which point it feels like alot of work. For mass market, these things need to be "0 or 1 click" actions. Ask "What are your 5 social networks", have the user select, then create the page. They can customize further after.
- Make it easy to select fun themes. People love to customize the look and feel.
- Make the Facebook and MySpace widgets "sing". Connecting to other social networks is key for this kind of aggregation, so make these features look great.
Give it a try.
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