New ‘Ginger’ Interface Spices Up Netvibes
The personalized start page service NetVibes is rolling out a new private beta version of the site, dubbed “Ginger.” Ginger features a redesigned Netvibes homepage with a host of new features including improved widgets and some new social networking features.
Netvibes began life as customizable start page like iGoogle and others, a place to collect RSS feeds and keep track of the things that interest you. However, Netvibes as been expanding for some time, adding all sorts of new data in the form of widgets, and, with the new social features in Ginger, Netvibes is moving beyond simple start page to social networking hub.
Ginger, which is still an invite-only beta, adds a new “universe” page to your Netvibes account. The universe page is a collection of publicly shared widgets and tabs that anyone, even those without a Netvibes account, can access. The new features are designed to give Netvibes users a way to collect all their activities, which may be spread across the web — on your blog, Flickr, Ma.gnolia Del.ici.ous, Twitter, Pownce, etc — into one simple page where your friends can keep track of everything you’re doing.
There’s also a new option to star items within any Netvibes widget and then share your starred items with the world or keep them private for your own reference. Anything marked as public will show up in your “activity” window and you’ll also be able to see what items your friends have marked. Perhaps more interesting is the news that Netvibes is reportedly working on plugins that will allow you to synchronize the items you mark in Netvibes with other services, like Facebook or Twitter for instance.
Ginger also provides some new features that allow you to track what your friends are up to, like Facebook status updates or anything they’ve shared through Netvibes.
Along with the new social networking features, the Ginger version of Netvibes features a slick new interface with some 100,000 widgets to choose from when creating your start page. While that may sound a bit overwhelming, finding and adding widgets in Ginger is actually quite easy thanks to a very well thought out interface and some elegant Ajax features.
Netvibes Ginger will officially launch in February and, if the company can indeed hook into other sites like Facebook or Twitter, it could become a simple and easy way to broadcast updates and more across all your social networking sites.
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