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I only just discovered Netvibes Coriander release just over a month ago, and was instantly hooked. This Friday last, I was offered an invite to Netvibes Ginger private beta, and if I was hooked before, I’m a flat out junkie now. If you don’t know what Netvibes is, let me take a moment to give you the quick and dirty on it.
Netvibes’ by-line is “(re)mix the web”, and that is exactly what it allows you to do. Your Netvibes page is a personalized home page that allows you to put all your online stuff in one place, making it easy to access without the need for a million bookmarks. There are also pre-configured widgets, tabs, and universes that you can add to your profile, making it easy to discover new stuff on the web. If you haven’t tried Netvibes out yet, you should.
The upcoming Ginger release adds a social element to Netvibes, but I’ll get into that in a moment. First I’d like to tell you about one of the new features that I truly appreciate: the ability to separate my page into a private page, and a universe, or public page. One reason that I never even considered publicizing my old page is because I had the email module on there, and I didn’t want to show my emails to the world. Now, with this new private/public feature, it’s not a problem.
I have my gmail, facebook, and other profiles on my private page for easy access, and anything that I think would be interesting or useful to the world at large in my public universe. Now I can start inviting friends to come and visit my page, and easily add modules, and share some of the cool things that I find here and there across the ‘Net.
I Haz no Friends
Perhaps the most important new feature that Netvibes is adding to Ginger is a suite of social functions, centered around the ability to add friends, and follow them. To note: these are two separate (though related) functions. The other thing to note is that the friends function seems to be for Ginger users only. As everybody will be upgraded to Ginger soon, this isn’t a huge issue, except for reviewers like me. To put it another way: I am the only person in my circle who is using Ginger, and consequently have no friends.
But, in the spirit of thoroughness, I went looking for some new friends. I started with Mike, the kind individual who sent me the invite in the first place. Unfortunately, there seems to be a few Mikes using the new system, and I have no idea as to which one he is. Taking a random guess, I added a “Mike” to my friends list, not because I thought he was the guy I was looking for, but because he has an interesting universe. This particular Mike seems to be into food, and that was good enough for me. Voila! I am now friends with Mike 
My search continued, and I now have two Mikes and a Janos in my friends list. I don’t actually know any of them, and herein lies one small peeve that I have with the system. I have no way to message them, and introduce myself, or explain why this weirdo from Canada is randomly adding them to his list.
Adding a friend is simple: you can either authorize Netvibes to search your email for other users, or you can type a name in the search field directly. Once you find who you are looking for, just click the icon beside their name. This will bring up some profile information, with a link to their public page, an add friend button, and an rss button.
The add friend button is self explanatory, but clicking the rss button doesn’t do exactly what I thought it might. When I clicked Mike’s rss button, a small window popped up, asking me if I wanted to add Mike’s feed to my page. I okayed it, and got an rss module that listed his recent public activity, which brings me to my next point. The new Netvibes allows you to update your status, creating a Twitter-like micro blogging environment. People can, by adding your rss feed to their universe, follow you around, Twitter style.
I Haz Stars in my Eyes
Yet another nice feature is the ability to star interesting items. Starring an item is similar to adding an item to your favourites, plus it gets added to your feed for all your friends to see and share. Unfortunately, you cannot add comments to your friends items, so communications between people is hampered. I would like to see some system to allow me to communicate a little more directly with the people in my contact list, similar in style to Facebook or Digg.
I would also like the ability to initiate some private communications with an individual, rather than just hoping that they are actually following me. The micro blogging updates are cool, but not always the most appropriate venue for communications.
Overall, I am thoroughly enamoured with Ginger. There is one more feature coming up. It hasn’t been implemented yet, but Drive promises to add one more element to the ‘Vibes experience: the ability to share files between friends. Drive will provide 2GB of online storage for each Netvibes user, with the ability to add more. The files that you upload can be shared with your friends.
I Haz a Thought
Overall, I am well and truly pleased with Ginger, and as I said at the outset, am now a confirmed Netvibes junkie.
Netvibes Ginger is a huge improvement on an already excellent product, especially with the addition of the social components. Unfortunately, though these features are a good start, they fall a little short of the mark. I like the ability to subscribe to people’s feeds, to be able to star items that really catch my interest, and I really like the separation of private and public pages.
However, the lack of communications ability between users beyond subscribing to their updates is a demerit in my books. The Twitter like functionality is cool, but with Twitter modules available for your page, there is little reason to switch to the Netvibes system. While you can export any module to your blog, there is still the issue of either switching from one to the other, or duplicating your micro blogging across platforms.
You cannot build a solid online community without fairly transparent communications. I understand that such a system is not without its dangers, but as so many other communities have demonstrated, the price is well worth it. I can only hope that these features will be added at a later date.
All that said, it is my considered opinion that Ginger is very cool, and well worth the small amount of time it takes to set up your page. To sum it up in one short sentence, I haz Ginger, and it is good.
You can check out my Netvibes Ginger page here, and when you have one of your very own, make sure to add me as a friend.
Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 6:00 amand is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hi Marc, np adding me to your friend list, I\'m discovering ginger features too
A clear and nice post by the way!
Hi Janos, nice to meet you
Thanks for stopping by, and I have to say that there certainly much more to discover yet. Luvin\' it!
Hi Marc, np adding me to your friend list, I’m discovering ginger features too
A clear and nice post by the way!
Hi Janos, nice to meet you
Thanks for stopping by, and I have to say that there certainly much more to discover yet. Luvin’ it!
Hi Marc,
Good analysis. I have added you in my Friends
and invite you to my own universe 
I had the same problem as you for direct communication on the universe with Friends and visitors. So I have tested with other interested friends a few solutions and the one I prefer is a widget that you can see and copy on my universe:
http://www.netvibes.com/netviberexperience
For more details on the widget go to my blog
http://netviber.blogspot.com/2008/02/better-way-t...
Have a nice day !
Hi Marc,
Good analysis. I have added you in my Friends
and invite you to my own universe 
I had the same problem as you for direct communication on the universe with Friends and visitors. So I have tested with other interested friends a few solutions and the one I prefer is a widget that you can see and copy on my universe:
http://www.netvibes.com/netviberexperience
For more details on the widget go to my blog
http://netviber.blogspot.com/2008/02/better-way-to-leave-short-message-on-my.html
Have a nice day !
Thanks, Netviber
I checked out your universe, and wow! are you a busy guy, lol! Looks awesome, though, and I will be trying out that widget, thanks 
Cheers, Marc
Thanks, Netviber
I checked out your universe, and wow! are you a busy guy, lol! Looks awesome, though, and I will be trying out that widget, thanks
Cheers, Marc
Gee Marc! I still haz Coriander
I didn\'t know you could add friends either. More investigation is needed. Ha!
Gee Marc! I still haz Coriander
I didn’t know you could add friends either. More investigation is needed. Ha!
I\'m not sure if you can add friends in Coriander… I\'ll have to check…
I’m not sure if you can add friends in Coriander… I’ll have to check…
Hi Marc,
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with us (those who didn\'t have the chance to test ginger).
I\'m not a pro, so please be patient with me.
I would like to ask your point of view on one item related to managing your \"friends\".
Whenever, I go on del.icio.us I feel as if I have split personality. I want to share my bookmark but everythings gets jammed under one profile, though I have other interests that I want to separate.
ie : there are some topics that I want to share with family, others with freinds and others with co-workers or internet buddies. Some topics might be private to a group and others can be public for all.
My life is complicated
Lately, I registered with another profile on delicius to share some information with my architect.
Did you find a site that can enable me to separate all the topics that I want to share and be selectif in sharing with the appropriate audience?
This could be interesting for my organisation and even to the visitors. I think a lot of people are not interested by the \"toilets\" that I found through the internet
Sorry for being so long, but I would welcome your input.
cheers
Paul
Hi Paul; Unfortunately, I do not know of a site or service that allows what you are asking, but I will certainly keep an eye out for it, as that\'s an awesome idea! I know that several of the bookmarking sites allow you to mark some of your bookmarks as \"private\", but I\'ve never used the feature so can\'t say much about that. I suspect that your solution of multiple profiles is the only really workable one. If you create a profile on a site that allows bookmarks to be private, you could just give the appropriate group\'s members the password, mark everything as private, and leave it at that. It\'s a bit of a pain (what? another password?), but it\'s all I\'ve got right now. If I do run across something that would solve your problem, I will be sure to write about it
Hi Marc,
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with us (those who didn’t have the chance to test ginger).
I’m not a pro, so please be patient with me.
I would like to ask your point of view on one item related to managing your “friends”.
Whenever, I go on del.icio.us I feel as if I have split personality. I want to share my bookmark but everythings gets jammed under one profile, though I have other interests that I want to separate.
ie : there are some topics that I want to share with family, others with freinds and others with co-workers or internet buddies. Some topics might be private to a group and others can be public for all.
My life is complicated
Lately, I registered with another profile on delicius to share some information with my architect.
Did you find a site that can enable me to separate all the topics that I want to share and be selectif in sharing with the appropriate audience?
This could be interesting for my organisation and even to the visitors. I think a lot of people are not interested by the “toilets” that I found through the internet
Sorry for being so long, but I would welcome your input.
cheers
Paul
Hi Paul;
Unfortunately, I do not know of a site or service that allows what you are asking, but I will certainly keep an eye out for it, as that’s an awesome idea! I know that several of the bookmarking sites allow you to mark some of your bookmarks as “private”, but I’ve never used the feature so can’t say much about that. I suspect that your solution of multiple profiles is the only really workable one. If you create a profile on a site that allows bookmarks to be private, you could just give the appropriate group’s members the password, mark everything as private, and leave it at that. It’s a bit of a pain (what? another password?), but it’s all I’ve got right now. If I do run across something that would solve your problem, I will be sure to write about it
hey.. i juz went from my normal netvibes to netvibes ginger and i followed the steps and now i found out that my page is public… but i don\'t want it to go public… how do i keep it private for myself again…? i would really appreciate it if you could drop me an email..
hey.. i juz went from my normal netvibes to netvibes ginger and i followed the steps and now i found out that my page is public… but i don’t want it to go public… how do i keep it private for myself again…? i would really appreciate it if you could drop me an email..
I haz no Ginger any more:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartclaeys/2461546576/
Bart, that sucks… What really bothers me most though is that they haven’t answered you yet… a couple of days, ok, but 6!? Not good.