Aug06
23
How I know Netvibes is Winning
Copy of spam an email I got from Pageflakes this morning:
Hi,
my name is Tegan and I am part of the Pageflakes team. I have visited your Blog and noticed that you offer a RSS subscription service to your users. May I suggest that you add the Pageflakes RSS subscription feature, too?
You can then use this button http://www.pageflakes.com/subscribe2.gif in combination with the link below:
http://www.pageflakes.com/subscribe.aspx?url= (followed by your Feed
URL)Or maybe you would be more interested in our affiliate program if so please feel free to visit http://www.pageflakes.com/affiliateprogram.html
If you have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact me.
With kind regards
Tegan Harris
I use Google Personalized Home. I love it. But I have never really taken the time to explore other options. Pageflakes is certainly better looking than Google Personalized Home (the user interface is great), and I immediately noticed that Pageflakes allows you to create multiple pages.
Richard MacManus did a review of the major players in the ‘Ajax Start’ applications earlier this year. Basically Ajax Start pages replace a homepage in your browser - almost acting as a custom-built web portal, the content of which is determined by you - the user. Pretty nifty.
Of all the Ajax Start players Netvibes seems to be dominating, having just landed another $15 million in funding. Netvibes is not as prety as Pageflakes, does not have the Google brand behind it, but certainly rocks despite that.
So my spammy invasion from Tegan this morning is probably a good sign that not only investors are watching Netvibes’ performance closely, but competitors too. However, email invites are just not the way to go. Find a competitive differentiator, implement it and wait for the blogosphere to market it.
Time for a switch methinks…
Update:
GorillaSushi uncovers more spam nastiness…
Tegan apologises.
How is that Spam? She was just asking you if you want to give the readers of your Blog the option to subscribe to your Blog RSS feed via the Pageflakes site. I don’t see how that can be seen as Spam. Geez, people are picky these days. I get like 200 spam emails every day and I simply delete them (and not dwell on them). That one was just an offer for a simple partnership…
Regards
Judd
It’s spam because it was pushed at me. I didn’t solicit it. I didn’t sign up for it.
Do you use Google or Yahoo! Judd? Did either send you a mail to tell you what they do?
Great web companies attract an audience because the audience discovers them.
I think comparing Yahoo/google to newly started ventures is a bit off the mark, but I see your general point. Anyway, there’s way worse spam than that. At least it’s from a real person and doesn’t want to sell you body-part-enlargement stuff…
Cheers
J.
Catchy name, slick design.. but I’m not gona switch just yet. These guys have some ground to make up in terms of functionality. One really cool thing about Netvibes is their keyboard shortcuts - great for whizzing through your feeds.
But great to see some competition, it should keep the bigger guys on their toes.
I’m with you on the netvibes. I think it is the next big thing. the next big web verb, after googling? “netvibing”?
Definaition of spam: Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
This wasn’t commercial, indiscripinate or or sent to multiple people. Sending an email is the way that another company should ask this kind of question isn’t it?
By the way, this comment form is busted big time. If required information is missing it ditches the message.
Thanks for your insightful contribution Joshd.
Firstly, if you read this you’ll see that I was not the only person to receive the mail. Others got identical copies.
Secondly, by definition required information is required. This is not rocket science Josh. I had my suspicions that you might be a PageFlakes employee but with a comment like that, I’m pretty satisfied you aren’t.
Next time, when it says ‘required’, type, and I’m sure you’ll be amazed at the results.
[...] On Wednesday I wrote about an email I had received from a Pagleflakes employee (Tegan) that had felt a bit like spam. I wasn’t particulary pissed off about it, rather pointing to different marketing approaches and the fine line between proactivity and spam in the world of Web 2.0 uber-competitiveness. [...]
this is not the first time that pageflakes does this. Everytime a post appear on the web with their competitor, they add a spam post (always the same). This is a very non ethical approach for a company that pretend to be web 2.0.
the fact is that they are very few blogs talking about pageflakes and the only way to stay visible is to add theses messages every where. I do agree, work on best features (not half finished features) and people will talk about you.
but we pf fans see it the other way … everytime I post a blog on pageflakes I see a netvibes comment … I see that to be quite unethical practice too.
But hey … its good to have them both in market trying to serve us customers …
what I mean to say is … if these companies compete to provide better services its always better for me. Google, netvibes, pageflake, yahoo, these companies are recognising the need for this type of sites and who knows … what we will see in future … I was recentlyu amazed to see Zohoo Writer … it was an awesome tool for the web. I hope in future we get to see even the competitors provide services that are interacting with each other. Think of hotmail … or even more recntly the Gmail revolution that forced all the webmail providers to scale up ….
@Raasiel, I don’t want to go too off-topic, but I checked both Writely and Zoho’s suite. Zoho has the appearance, but Writely has the functionality. Plus, Zoho has some bugs that need to be squshed out. And Writely displays uploaded documents a tad bit better (no extra gaps/line spacings etc…)
Start pages: well - I have to agree - Netvibes lacks a good interface, and is a little slower in showing up the main page (unlike Pageflakes which loads up quicker - I’m on dialup, that’s how I know) but Netvibes has more modules/tabs etc etc. I shifted from Google’s because Netvibes has an RSS reader (or pop-up baloons atleast) and a podcast player (not that I ever use it - not sure about Pageflakes).
In short - we’ll never find what we’re looking for… atleast I won’t
Guess we’ll have to live with compromises (hey - isn’t that the definition of “life”?)
Protopage? They lack modules and stuff, but the best thing is that it’s drag and drop, and very, very, very simple!
This is an e-mail, it’s not spam. Do you sign-in to e-mails from friends, too?
As long as this isn’t a newsletter, this is really no spam.
Sebastian - firstly, it’s spam because more than one stranger to Tegan got the same email. That’s spam, even if it was unintentional.
Secondly, as you will see in follow-up posts, Tegan apologised for the mail stating it was her fist job in ‘internet marketing’ - sounds like spam to me.
My fault for not showing Tegan’s apology in my update - smack smack.