And now one of the talks everybody hase been waitng for; Tariq Krim from the Parisien Netvibes. Krim starts off by mentioning that it’s all about attention these days. Our digital life is going out off control. Netvibes helps you to focus what is important to you. Netvibes brings you straight to the data you want to see. There’s no adverteising, no logo’s, no corporate control on the pages. It offers 100% user control.

A short history: Netvibes is launced in september 2005 in Paris and took off international soon after. A volunteer community translated the project into 80+ languages. There are more than 10 million users in 150 countries. More than 1,5 m unique rss-feeds are flowing through the pages. Flashback to three main concepts of the web. First, the web freed the data from being locked up on standalone computers. Next, the web freed the application, the data actually has become the application. Last, the web has freed the user. The web has moved to a widgetized web. The web page is just a transition. I like this concept. It’s confirming the notice of Tim O’Reilly that the web 2.0 is transforming into a platform.

Netvibes took several steps in accelerating the widgetiezed web. The first step is that the widgets developed for Netvibes will work anywhere, on Apple’s dashboard, on Google etc. The second step is the Netvibes Universe, content from 500 brands and artists is widgetized.

And now the question: where’s the money? They have a few ways of earning money.  In Netvibes you only get to see what you want to see, so no Google’s Adsense ad’s or banners. They monetize some of the widgets, but not all. But the most promising approach is to widgetize the web store. Monetizing on the web was first about advertising, next about Adsense your webpage, but the next stage is to offer a complete webstore in a widget. It reminds me of Dell’s philosphy, cut out the middle man. That’s is a very promising model.

Try Netvibes! (no login required, you can start right away)