Pageflakes receives funding! Heating up AJAX-Desktop Battle!
After Netvibes received some funding from Index and well-connected business angels, Michael Arrington revealed that Pageflakes will announce a funding round from Benchmark. This obviously will heat up the still early-days of customizable, personalized home-pages.
Takeaway: The funding of these two additional competitors of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo will definitely heat up things in this space, which ultimately will benefit the users / consumers of these services. The major question is, how the ultimate business model of these services will look like. Will it primarily be an ad-financed business model? Are users accepting advertisements on their personal home pages? Are users willing to pay for premium services and if yes, what is the % share the home-page provider can get from this pie? What other ways of monetarization are possible with such a service?
Recommendation: Knowing both Tariq and Christoph personally, I am sure that these two smart guys, might find answers to these questions. Watch Netvibes and Pagesflakes closely as they will be decent contenders of GYM in this space.
