Add some spice to your Startpage with a little Ginger

Ginger is Netvibes newest release, it is described on their site as being:

“Completely redesigned and rewritten, Netvibes Ginger makes it easy for new users to enjoy a wide variety of social content, while enabling them to easily publish their digital lives, with a redesigned graphical widget and feed collection, ready-made tabs, channels and user communities.”

It is basically a mix between the current Netvibes and a social networking platform. Integrating social networking into a startpage could be a cleaver and successful way to increase adoption. In Ginger each account is associated with a profile which includes the trusty profile pic of course and a twitter-like messaging system.

Netvibes Ginger : Activities from Maurice Svay on Vimeo.  I would say the social features of Ginger are what really make it sizzle though those are not the only enhancements. You can also add more and richer content to your personal page or to your Universe.

Netvibes Ginger: Add content from Maurice Svay on Vimeo.What is a Universe you ask?
” Universes are media portals that contain your entire digital life. Until now, only premium partners (ie Newsweek) and celebs (ie. 50 Cent) could publish Universes. Now anyone can publish their own Universe. Going way beyond blogging, Universes enable any user to publicly showcase their Facebook and MySpace friends, Flickr photos, videos, music, favorite articles and widgets from mainstream content partners, all on one page that readers can remix and personalize to their heart’s content.”

Ginger is currently in private Beta (will be in public Beta later this month) but I hear they are being generous with invites.