Netvibes has evolved considerably in the nearly 10 years of their existence. The company’s initial goal was to enable consumers to listen, learn and act on their data and with that goal in mind, they pioneered the first personalized dashboard-publishing platform for the web. They stepped it up a gear when they evolved even further with their latest announcement on February 11. They intend to become the dashboard for the Internet of Things (IoT) with the recent launch of the Dashboard of Things (DoT).

Freddy Mini took over the reins of Netvibes’ CEO from co-founder Tariq Krim in 2008. I spoke to Mini about Netvibes’ survival tactics that they used to support their initial goal of providing consumers with web-based actions to enhance their personal data experience.

Freddy Mini, CEO Netvibes

Mini spoke about how the company has adapted to the ever-changing social internet over the last 10 years of their existence.

“The Internet first brought together Content and then evolved to bring together People in the social web (Web 2.0). Today we’re seeing a third evolution as connected devices come online to join the Internet of Things. The evolution of Netvibes has followed the same path. First, we bring together all the content and data that matters to you. Second, we make it simple to analyze and engage with the social web from your dashboard. Third, we now enable users to control and program their devices and apps using Netvibes’ Dashboard of Things (DoT).”

Mini also spoke about Netvibes’ evolution over the last 10 years, “Since 2009, Netvibes’ vision is “Dashboard Intelligence,” enabling users to listen, learn and act on the data that matters. The first step in Netvibes’ evolution was listening—bringing together all your data from across the Internet. We then introduced SmartTagging, social media analytics and recently MisoData analytics to enable drag-to-compare charts and visualization, so users can ask any question and learn from all their data. Users could then choose to act, based on the intelligence provided by the dashboard. Today, with DoT, you can now teach your dashboard to act for you, automatically. DoT is brand new, and we will continue to add support for more devices and apps. We envision Netvibes as the “Mission Control” of your Internet, with dashboards for any given topic where you can monitor, analyze and control everything.”

How is the DoT going to help the average consumer? “The average consumer can be easily overwhelmed by the Internet of Things—hundreds of devices interacting with apps and data. How can you keep track of it all, and more important, how can you control all the automatic interactions taking place between everything? Netvibes’ Dashboard of Things is easy to use, yet powerful to enable all users to program their own Web. Ultimately, the consumer will benefit by saving time, conserving resources and bettering their quality of life—even through something as simple as programming the lawn sprinklers to pause when there’s rain in the forecast.”

The latest DoT also includes a Potions app that allows the user to create “if this, then that, or else do this” automations. Users can either choose from pre-made Potions (shared by Netvibes or, soon, the community), or they can create a new Potion from scratch by selecting the ingredients. I asked Mini how the Potions app differs from services like IFTTT or Zapier?

“Programmable, programming and programmers.

First Netvibes is the definition of your internet on a topic. You aggregate, understand and now can program your Internet—the Internet you’ve defined in your dashboard. DoT is the third step in the delivery of our Dashboard Intelligence vision. Netvibes already enables organizations to monitor and analyze all the data that matters to them. With DoT, users can now automate actions based on smart insights from the dashboard. For example: ‘If negative Twitter sentiment about my brand increases by 10%, then email me’. Netvibes’ unique approach begins to bridge business intelligence with artificial intelligence.

Second, the key is to help everyone access programming. DoT today offers the most powerful access to if all or any of this, then all this; otherwise, all that.

Third, we believe a programmable Internet must address programmers. This is why we have created Netvibes Programming Language (NPL) and opened an advanced mode so a full logic powered by both a natural and object oriented language are available today.

NPL is a new language we created to make it easy for anyone to program complicated interactions, using multiple triggers and actions. NPL is based on JavaScript and is immediately intuitive for programmers to use. The best part is that you don’t have to be a programmer to program your own Internet with Netvibes. Our DoT features a “Basic Mode” that makes Potion creation as simple as dragging boxes. Users can also toggle to “Advanced Mode” to see their Potion written in NPL; this makes NPL easy to learn and delivers full programmability for Potions.”

Netvibes currently has 7 million unique users per month, which spans across individuals, agencies and enterprises. Mini said, “So far, people love the Dashboard of Things and are excited by the possibilities it offers.”

Where does Mini see Netvibes heading in the future?, “Netvibes will continue to advance our vision of Dashboard Intelligence, adding new functionality to enable users to listen, learn and act on their data. At a time when many people in the industry are talking about Artificial Intelligence, Netvibes is developing smart dashboards that can act for you. With the new DoT, users can automate actions to occur based on smart data insights from the dashboard–which begins to bridge business intelligence with artificial intelligence.”

Images courtesy: Netvibes; Freddy Mini via LinkedIn