Customized home page startup Pageflakes launched a slew of new features this morning under what it is calling its “Blizzard” release.
Among all of the new features, the two that are important to highlight are social networking and customizable themes on pages.
Until today Pageflakes users could create pages for their own use, and/or make public pages called Pagecasts. The content was and continues to be completely up to the user. Now, however, each user also gets a profile page and can add other Pageflakes users as friends. Effectively, Pageflakes is now a social network, and users can connect based on common interests. See a screen shot of my profile page above (click for larger view). Users with common interests are shown on the bottom right.
Pageflakes is also releasing “themeable” public pages and has partnered with a number of high profile media companies to create their own Pagecasts – USA Today, Rolling Stone, CNN, WashingtonPost, Newsweek Interactive, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, Slate, AOL, Die Welt, Bild and others. This is comparable to Netvibes’ Universe product, although Pageflakes is live and anyone can create a themed public page (Netvibes still requires a partnership, you can’t just create one yet). Over 120,000 public pages have been created by users to date – now those pages can have custom themes. The TechCrunch public Pageflakes page is here.
Pageflakes also continues to roll out more widgets – they have 240,000 so far. And new users will like the auto-customization that lets them create a customized page quickly based on a few questions.
See a full profile of the company here, and note previous product releases as well. This continue to be a heavily competitive space, but that competition is driving innovation – from Pageflakes as well as the others. Consumers win.
The site is not yet live….
Chris @ http://www.frostfirebuzz.com – Internet business news
I am a big fan of Pageflakes, and it’s a .NET application. Nice!
A PageCast dedicated to me!? OMG! LOL!
http://www.bell...rixkillsron.com
Damn , it’s down. Maybe I’ll switch back from Netvibes…
i want to be just like mike arrington when i grow up
120,000 pagecasts even before this announcement was impressive It’s amazing that Pageflakes got so many people to create shareable collections. Pageflakes is a cool start page, but it also has a ton of potential to push social search off the dime and into the mainstream.
In 2006 Jakob Nielsen did some interesting research. He quantified the 90-9-1 rule which states that 90% of those online are viewers, 9% are participants, and 1% are creators.
So let’s use these numbers as an argument for Pageflakes being the second coming of social search. Users use Pageflakes as their start page everyday, adding new content, tweaking, and improving it for themselves; it’s purely self-interest. Now Pageflakes let’s you share these pages. So when my page gets to a point where I think it’s cool I can simply share it. No hassles. Hey, I wasn’t even planning to share; they made it a no-brainer. Under this premise, everyone on Pageflakes is a potential creator. Pageflakes cracked the 90-9-1 rule.
It’s like del.icio.us – you’re storing your bookmarks anyway, so why not share them? I think Blizzard marks the second generation of social search, and most likely the way people will use social search in the future.
Mashup/social search sites like Squidoo, imeem and webjam are all hot, but will soon be seen as the first generation of social search. If you follow Mr. Neilson’s logic, sites like Squidoo have a self-defined ceiling of potential users. On the other hand, Pageflakes is first and foremost an organizational tool, so it’s easy and works for everyone.
“First generation” social search sites make their users create mashups specifically with the intent of sharing them. Squidoo claims they have 135,000 lenses. Assume they all come from “creators.” If the ratio of participants to creators is really 9:1 as Mr. Neilsen suggests, and Pageflakes “participants” can share what they’ve done without feeling like they’re “creating” then expect Pageflakes to soon have 1.2 million pagecasts. Or “viewers” start doing it. Then we might see thirteen million pagecasts.
Richard Buck
CEO, Eluma
Very cool. The lines are blurring, the future should be exciting. I suspect the next big winners will be those who manage to hit just the right mix of social networking, home page, and social news (and maybe some extra magic ingredient?). I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but it’s coming.
I’m happy.
Pageflakes…the hero of the .NET community. Anyway, great writeup and I look forward to more from PageFlakes in the future. I wish all .NET startups launched apps like this – then maybe the stigma would go away.
Hey Mike…
You like RANI MUKHERJEE !!! Interesting…
I think they’ve gone over the top here with a feature spree, it’s hard to understand what the product is or how it should be used.
I much perfer the much simpler and understandable http://www.netvibes.com and http://www.protopage.com
I would love to see the it, but the site is still not up. Good grief.
I used to use pageflakes for my RSS feeds (via a series of personalized pages) because netvibes was so slow. But then netvibes speed improved somewhat, so I switched to netvibes.
If they can ever get pageflakes up and running again (it’s dead at the moment despite saying it would be working at 2pm EDT), I might switch back. This is a crazy way to launch a new and improved service. Jeezus.
The widget concept is awesome, it’s why we ended going with it as well. The problem I see with page flakes is why scatter your market?? You can’t be all things to all people. Either be a homepage, or a social network. We chose to be the latter, and also focus on singles only.
Netvibes FTW! Seriously though, Netvibes dominates Pageflakes (and iGoogle).
i’m back to pageflakes now. i’m very impressed with the rss reader option. sthg that spun-off google reader but hey, personally its ‘outlook’ feature certainly won me over. google reader doesnt really let u read the full news.
Pageflakes made a realy easy-to-use service even easier…love that everything is under that one button. The best thing about the new social networking stuff, and what sets it apart, is that you actually don’t have to be part of a social network or have a profile in order to enjoy and get a lot out of Pageflakes. I’ve been a personalized page user at Pageflakes for a long time, and before that My Yahoo. I really enjoy the Pagecasts that other people make, and I learn a lot of new things that way. The new features let me learn a bit more about the people behind the Pagecasts, and if I so choose to later, connect with them.
The thing doesn’t work with Safari, not even with the 3.0 beta. I’ll try this in another year or two. In the meantime, I’m quite happy with NetVibes.
I’ve always had problems with Pageflakes in Firefox. The fact that it’s a .NET app probably explains it. So no thanks, I’m sticking with Netvibes.
Mixing all these things may be good, it saves me from jumping evrywhere. But I still feel like it’s a trap – The reason I hated AOL was becuase they confined you only to thier dite…..?????
Okay Cool More Pimping out stuff? Will i’m using this Start Page http://www.Wirei.com Its Good enough for me,
i’m using this Start Page http://www.Wirei.com Its Good enough for me,
@Badger: Never had problems with Pageflakes in Firefox…works just grand, always has and new version too looks awesome!
pageflakes rockz, ‘nough said. they are the clear leader in this space now… tons of features and excellent content gallery.
karo
The best way to experience pageflakes is to use firefox 2.xxx.
I tried safari 3.0 for windows, its still not up to the mark yet. Dont understand why would anyone use that except for replacement for IE6, the worst browser. I use Opera and Pageflakes works quite fine with Opera …
They seem to have a feed for any keyword. There is a huge stash of feeds and podcasts. Nice!
I liked netvibes in the first appearence, but after you try to use it for real life work they dont have any good widgets. Like most of their searches are like multi search and so on but they only go 1/2 page. sucks. Netvibes is not good for real life work, google is too bad design, live is a joke, pageflakes is right for me. Rss reader is quite good.
I just tested out this thing …. If the feed has movies, songs the awesome RSS reader shows it and plays it. …WOW! It can even add a podcast. Just awesome. I am blown away.
I also like the new features of pageflakes. I, too, have found myself publishing pages that I never intended to. I’ve also been able to make some pages that have useful resources I’ve accumulated over time. I always kept saying, I’ll make a website. Never happened! Anyway, I’m happy for the improvements. Keep going pageflakes. Cheers!
For me, Pageflakes has become the easiest way to publish a dynamic web page and collect other services I have used on one page. The surface work that was done to allow my page to become more personal is a great customization, but the one feature that I think that has been overlooked is the “Anything Flake”. This latest flake allows me to easily add other widgets from around the web – including the ability to put advertising on my site.
Used pageflakes as my personal startpage to manage my daily reads, calendar and mails. Great tool !
the blizzard version of pageflakes is awesome!!!
loved the new one click gallery + settings, new glossy look and feel + custom page themes.
although i’m an old pageflakes user – i never tried out publishing pages (called pagecasts now). after spending some time rearranging my flakes and playing with custom page themes i realized that my masterpieces looked really impressive and were worth publishing
the new social networking feature is a great addition. i can search the pageflakes people directory to see what pagecasts my friends are creating + check out people with similar interests. one new feature that really caught my eye was you can copy a pagecast page and it gets added to you tabs. and the new and improved rss flake + rss reader (outlook replacement) is simply awesome.
Pageflakes is great as an organizational tool and now has a great way to share my interests with my firends via the social networking features. It’s easy to use and is awesome!!! I switched from MyYahoo to Pageflakes and I have no reason to go back. Keep up the great work!