Tariq Krim

I was last week at the founder’s forum near London, a gathering of internet entrepreneurs hosted by brent (lastminute, mydeco), Johnny Goodwin from Jefferies and Marc Samwer. I was really nice to have time to meet with friends in Europe this time and congratulate Xochi and Michael on their move with Bebo. It is also very interesting to talk with entrepreneurs because you don’t have to convince them about an idea you just have to explain why you are going to make it successful.

I talked a lot about netvibes, the widget economy and new opportunities of this market.

Netvibes is mostly know by the consumer for being the coolest start page on the market, but on the business side, we are known as the company that provide an alternative widget platform to Google gadget. End of this week netvibes will launch a new set of opensource tools will leverage the full potential of netvibes API and platform. It’s a new step in embracing data portability with announced support of oAuth and Openid and cool examples in the mobile. The announcement is happening at netvibes developer camp and at netvibes.org

One of the interesting discussions we had was regarding opportunities brought by the widget to monetize social web. Europe is still a virgin territory as key services like slide rockyou , clearspring operate mostly in the US. Netvibes is definitely one of the only companies that operate in the widget market in Europe. Even if a large part our netvibes revenues comes from US operations.

Before the introduction of netvibes ginger, netvibes business model was based on selling premium universe (netvibes branded pages) to our partners with monthly license fees. Now in addition, Netvibes Ginger integrates a widget ad networks that enable partners to distribute sponsored widgets. The model is a cost per install or CPI and is auction based. This program is just a few month old and had a great kick start. In netvibes categories in the add content you can see live sponsored placements from amazing brands and media. To have more details about this have a look in our business section (business.netvibes.com) or this presentation I did for the online French media association.

How big is this market?

Lots of people are wondering if we can monetize well the web 2.0 and social media properties. With traditional ads networks in don’t think so, but I really think that widgets will.

The Widget economy is going to be huge, In 2008 it will be $40M ( I would say $15M in Europe) according emarketer and this is just the beginning . Slow down in ad spending in social media will hurt mostly traditional advertising not widgets and appvertising that bring performance based models and virality.

Expect the rise of the widget economy to happen in the second semester of 2008 and explode in 09. This is great news for netvibes and other widgets platforms. Congrats to Hooman for the Clearspring new round of financing!