The Buzz about Netvibes
Published by Siddiq Bello September 11th, 2006 in Broadband, Innovation, MP3tunes, Tech Musings, Web 2.0, mp3.I was looking through the traffic stats on the site a couple of weeks ago when I noticed something interesting. It seems that more then 2/3 of you, my readers, never actually visit the site. This discovery was a bit of a shock. Who knew that the reason most of you visited this site wasnt for my thoughtful graphic selections (ie random stuff I find with Google images) and arduously designed webpages (default theme #31). The vast majority of you are reading this right now are probably doing it via an RSS reader. Even more surprising is the choice of RSS reader that most to you use to access the witty prose, biting commentary and BGO’s (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious) that I provide on a fairly random and inconsistent basis. The RSS reader of choice of my amazingly advanced audience is from a little known and recently funded company called Netvibes.
More readers see this site through Netvibe then Bloglines, Newsgator, Thunderbird, NetNewsWire, browers “livemarks”, BlogPulse and Google combined. Netvibes is one of several new web applications that function as a universal homepage, a single place where you can access and view news, information and media from a bunch of different websites. Think of it as an RSS reader on steroids, or as NetVibes states in its tag line, “near universal mash-up” which is exactly what it does better then any of the alternatives and there are lots of them. Pageflakes and Protopages are two of my favorites but Suprglu , Webwag, Yoosi are all worth a look. I prefer Google’s version of the universal start page and a whopping 2% of you are with me in this choice. However, if the wisdom of crowds is to be believed then we may need to reconsider our choice and get with the Netvibes buzz.
Hi,
Indeed the tendence to get information through rss feeds is very strong. I was however, a bit surprised then to have to click on “More” on Bloglines to land on the website. Are you not publishing the whole feeds? Wouldn’t it be more user friendly to do so in light of that information?
Cheers,
Hector
Hector,
Your right on this one. The problem isnt with a setting I can modify (as far as I know). The text in the RSS feeds is truncated by the use of the tag. Since I put this tag in to make reading the site simpler it has the unintended effect of not allowing some RSS readers to get hte full text. I’ll check and see if there is a work around. Your right it would be a more user friendly option.