Startpages. Who needs them ?

Filed in archive Web 2.0 on March 27, 2007

Almost every (big) search engine has one : a personalized start page. And there are others. Netvibes, Pageflakes and more have popped up sometime last year, and they all offer largely the same : a page that shows rss headlines from several sites that you organize and arrange yourself. Using a login and a cookie, the site always shows up just as you like it, so it's called personalized.

I don't like these startpages much. Why ? Well, what am I going to do on a page that shows a couple of headlines ? I use my feedreader to read the news I need to know. So who needs them ?


My guess is *normal people*. Who are they ? Well, Joe Average and his friends. Why ? Startpages show, arranged by you, what you want to read or see. So what's the catch ? None. It's a matter of what's handy. No more typing and remembering url's you want to read daily, but get all the headlines of all your favorite sites on one site. Why not....