It's 'au revoir' for Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim
Netvibes, a company offering services for creating personalized home pages and a platform for widgets, announced on Thursday that founder and Chief Executive Tariq Krim is stepping aside.
Although Chief Operating Officer Freddy Mini will be taking his place as CEO, Krim will remain on the Paris-headquartered company's board of directors. No concrete reason for his departure was provided.
In a release Thursday, Mini called Krim "a true visionary" and touted the fact that nearly 1,000 clients are using the Netvibes widget platform, which went open-source last month. Mini, a former employee of CNET News.com parent company CNET Networks, has been Netvibes' COO since 2006, working on expanding the company's U.S. operations.
Moving forward, Netvibes will likely continue to focus on its widget platform, which has a much sunnier outlook than the personalized home page service. Sites in that niche have had a tough time in the face of competition from Google's iGoogle and Yahoo's My Yahoo, not to mention the fact that personalized home pages just aren't as chic as they were in 2002.
Smaller rival Pageflakes was acquired last month by LiveUniverse, after rumors floated that it needed to find a buyer.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
