Update 1715h: I will add that it *is* interesting to see which blogs are added to certain A-lister’s universes.  case in point, I humbled to say that DJI is listed on the TechCrunch Universe. Thanks, Mike wherever you are. ;)

I like Netvibes. I use it for my start page. I like it because you can view a lot of feeds all *at once*, and throughout the geography of your screen — something you really can’t do with Google reader. But this new development at Netvibes has me puzzled. This Netvibes “universe”, where Netvibes has worked with known brands to create personalized spaces for themselves, such as 50cent, Mandy Moore, CBS, and CNN. Unlike Pageflakes, there is significant control over the CSS so these spaces can be *quite* personlized in layout as well as graphics and over all design.

But in all of the hubaloo (and its a moderate amount, sure), is anyone asking the first question of New Product Releases?

“Who Cares?”

I mean, yes, I understand that in a few months we’ll all be able to create our own Netvibes spaces — I mean, universes. I’ll ask again: “who cares?”

In fact, there are at least three reasons why no one should care:

1. Universes are hosted on the Netvibes domain: Why would I spend time and energy promoting traffic to a domain I don’t own? Furthermore, if you’re going to use it as a lead generation site, why not just create your own space with open-source software? Love widgets and plugins? Hey I have just the thing. Its called Wordpress. Or MySpace. I hear you can load up tons of widgets there — as long as the widget doesn’t get too popular.

2. No Built In Network: Or, rather, potential network. Myspace, for all its warts, has one thing going for it: the ability to make “friends”. So you’ve got your own personalized space that you can recommend to folks. How are you going to keep a list of people that are going to drop by? How are you going to let them know about stuff that’s updated? What about if you have something to promote? I know, very web1.0′ish, but for internet marketers and, well, *businesses*, this is kind of important. Having the ability to make “friends”, keep track of “friends”, and most importantly, ability to contact these “friends” is the special sauce that keeps stuff like this going. In fact, its one of the pillars of social networking. Yes, I know you can “add a universe” to your personal network, but can Universe creators contact you? Can they see a list of all of their “fans”? I haven’t seen anything to suggest this. So, yes, I’m saying that its wrong that Netvibes has no built in network; rather, without a robust network system, it cripples any reason why anyone would be interested in it.

3. No one cares what you (passively) recommend: I’ll take this out of the pages of blogospheric history. There’s a reason why the “blogroll” is soon becoming a relic of times past (times past being, say, 2005). Its because no one really cares who your friends are, or, who you passively recommend through your sidebar. Don’t believe me? Check your analytics program and assess how many “clickouts” are through your blogroll. I’ll extend this to the Netvibes Universe. Unless you happen to have a fair degree of notoriety or celebrity in your corner of the blogosphere, no one is going to care what your Netvibe Universe page says. What they *will* care about is your actual blog’s posts, which are fresh, topic, and intriguing. Yes, I’m saying that most of us are time-sensitive creatures, and it doesn’t sound like spending time on your Netvibes Universe page is a worthwhile use of your “blogging” time.

While Netvibes could fix number two, I still have a hard time seeing how the Universe concept is going to benefit the average blogger, or even, the average social networking fiend. Is there any reason someone would start creating a startpage here, rather than continue their time on MySpace or Facebook?

I know its not a zero-sum game, but I have a really hard time convincing myself that they would.