Point Oh!

Netvibes may be pulling away in this whole modular Web movement.  Yesterday the company announced that it would be launching it’s own universal widgets standard, which wasn’t much of a secret, as well as a new start page codenamed “Ginger.”  As Mashable reported, the company no longer has any plans to build a social network of it’s own but I’m starting to wonder if that even matters with the way OpenSocial and other standards are emerging.

When you think about what has really been the key factors in social networks like Facebook and MySpace taking off, it usually comes back to the level of customization.  Wasn’t the lack of customization and other restrictions pretty much responsible for the decline of Friendster after all?  Not only does Netvibes accommodate the need to customize but it’s commitment to open standards is pretty much ensuring interoperability with most other social networks (although it still remains to be seen whether or not Facebook will embrace any of these standards).

Let’s imagine a future where social networking is completely ubiquitous.  Your grandma is on Facebook because it’s easy, the AOL of social networks.  Your company’s computer guy has built his own page that incorporates these standards based on some template he found on Source Forge.  Your niece is on some yet to be launched service that protects her from creepy old guys.  What kind of service would you choose?  Is Netvibes technology too daunting for casual users?  Not really.  Does Netvibes easily allow you to aggregate content from other services?  Yes, just about as easily as possible.  Does Netvibes enable you to express yourself and share your “profile” with others?  It’s not completely seamless but it’s getting there.