Continuing from my earlier discussion on why startpages are so important.

The problem with the current corp of startpages is they are too damn confusing

I just headed on over to Netvibes and it made my head throb. There are so many potential choices it made my head spin. Modules, feeds, six different searches (’web search’ vs ‘classic web search’), dozens of links, Mini API module … it is completely overwhelming.

Then each module itself has all these inner tabs - four tabs for web search, four for images, four for video search. Wasted space in the form of ‘Netvibes news’

Startpages that cater to parasitic users (eg early-adopters) are doomed to chase feature after feature. By focusing on ‘normal’ users they have the ability to really create a connection with these end users.

I originally bought the domain iBegin.com for a startpage. I had seen some JS examples of modular windows being moved around, and it was extremely thrilling. Problem was I took too long, and before I knew it, Netvibes had arrived on the scene, and I was still getting the machinery moving (really a blessing in disguise - iBegin as local search is where I want to be). To that end, when we had specced out what we wanted, our core goals were the following:

  1. Simple. We were not going to mention the word RSS anywhere. We were going to have some fixed RSS feeds, and thats it. There would be a module for search that would default to Google (and then users could edit that if they wanted).
  2. Connected. The end goal was to have a static url for every user that they could access. Eg http://www.ibegin.com/ahmedf/ or http://www.ibegin.com/ahmedsmama/
  3. Different audience. The hardest part, but we wanted to aim towards people who couldn’t care about fancy and instead wanted stability and usefulness. Eg my mother or my father. I would create them a startpage, ‘lock’ it (so that modules could not be accidentally moved/edited), and then set it as their startpage. Every day they would open up to a startpage that had quick links to where they wanted to go, weather, ability to perform a quick web search, a quick product search, place to scribble notes, access email, and (for my father) news links. I wouldn’t even mention the words module, API, feeds, or anything like that to them. By forcing a static url on them, they could go traveling and still have access to all their links (only having to login to edit notes).

You can even see the design we had formulated (click to enlarge):

The current crop of startpages are simply too damn confusing and complicated. I actually hope 37signals could maybe join the fray and create their own startpage :)