This is really something of a shame. I like Netvibes, and have done for years; it's a good stable platform and a really good home/start page. I've encouraged people to try it out on just about all of my courses, and recently suggested that it would make a good replacement for Google Reader. I like to think that I've done more than my fair share of championing a good product. However, they have made a change to one of their really popular widgets recently; a bookmarking one, and it wasn't a change for the better. It was bigger, clunkier and well - pretty awful. I didn't like it, and more to the point a lot of other users didn't like it either. We took to Twitter to complain and see if we could get it rolled back, and we also asked on their Facebook page - again in quite large numbers.
Hidden in a reply to one of the complaints was a reply from a Netvibes staffer who said that there wouldn't be a rollback, and that the new design was here to stay. I posted a couple of times, the last being to try and helpfully point unhappy users to other resources. I checked back a few minutes ago, and my post had been deleted, most of the other complaints had gone, and I'm now unable to post to the Facebook Netvibes page.
Clearly someone at Netvibes has made the decision that they don't want to talk to their users. This is a great shame, particularly as a lot of people are looking around for alternative RSS readers now that Google Reader is no more. Instead of being welcoming and helpful they have instead chosen to make life difficult, block and ban comments and treat their users with contempt. This isn't going to get them more users - it's going to end up with a lot less. I'll certainly have to think about going elsewhere now, and I'll have to rethink my stance on teaching Netvibes in my classes.
I really hope that someone from Netvibes is checking social media, since I am still hoping that they'll prove to be a better company than they currently are.
LOL. I have heard of non-net-savvy companies, but what Netvibes have done must take the cake. And its really ironic. A social media monitoring tool, itself censoring critical social media mentions!
Posted by: mad.madrasi | March 24, 2013 at 12:27 PM
Interestingly, the comments have reappeared on their Facebook page (though one of mine is still missing) and I'm able to write to it again. I think someone higher up the chain must have come to their senses!
Posted by: Phil Bradley | March 24, 2013 at 02:59 PM
I agree totally. It was a shock the other day when I opened Netvibes. For me the reasons why new bookmarks widget is awful:
- The links used to all show up in a nice small box, now I have to either scroll up and down or move between screens. Either way I can't see all the links in a popular tag on one screen anymore. They take up so much space.
- There are extra icons taking up space above the links. It used to be small and compact, now there are all sorts of things I don't use e.g. 'search'. Also there are now two 'options' icons doing different things, couldn't all the options go into one place as they used to?
- Clicking another tag used to display those links. Now it displays them AND the previous tag, so you also have to deselect the previous tag, doubling the number of clicks.
- Maybe some people will like the new one but I find it unworkable.
I contacted Netvibes and suggested they reinstate the old bookmarks widget - they could offer both, 'bookmarks 1' and 'bookmarks 2', there's no need to force everyone to use just one design.
Especially since they already have both, there's no extra work involved!
They didn't bother to reply. I have been using Netvibes for years, and always had a positive opinion until this - I'm just shocked that they can roll out changes like this with no consultation, then ignore the people using their product! Maybe they feel like they going to have a monopoly so don't care any more.
Posted by: Karl Drinkwater | March 25, 2013 at 10:52 AM
Google has been making changes too. Reader is going and iGoogle has been changed twice recently. It seems odd for something to be discontinued in November had to be redone so I lost my Search boxes and chosen feeds. About the only good thing is that nothing has vanished abruptly the way Pageflakes and Marigold did. Yet oddly I hadn`t even noticed changes to Netvibes.
Posted by: opit | March 26, 2013 at 05:37 AM
I agree entirely with yours and Karl's comments above. I have been a champion of Netvibes for years and this change is the first time I have started to look elsewhere for a more user-friendly feed reader. It's incredibly frustrating. I hope they take some action to address the problem. The bookmarks were great as they were but are almost unusable in their new format. I'll be switching to feedly I think.
Posted by: Samantha Grant | April 03, 2013 at 03:14 PM