Netvibes goes mobile, for real this time

Netvibes' new superfast mobile version.

Single-page aggregator Netvibes quietly launched a mobile version of its site in February. It was a bit of a hack: If you created a "mobile" tab, then when you visited Netvibes from your mobile, the feeds you put in that tab would show up.

Today, Netvibes has gone to the next step with two new mobile sites. The lightweight mobile version of the site, m.netvibes.com, doesn't require any special tabs. On your mobile you can select any tab you've created on your desktop or laptop, and it displays almost everything, formatted for the small device. Horizontal scrolling is dropped, for example, and everything goes vertical. However, some widgets don't work, and they just don't show up. I couldn't display my Flickr photos, for example.

The iPhone version of the same page. Better. But slower.

iPhone users get a more capable site, which, since it relies on the capable Safari browser, displays widgets with more fidelity and does a good job with graphics. It also looks really sharp on an iPhone display.

Mobile Netvibes seems to default to the lightweight site on Windows phones, and to the iPhone site if you're running the Safari browser, but you can override this and visit the iPhone version directly at iphone.netvibes.com.

Either way, this new capability adds a lot of functionality. I think it makes the service a great RSS reader (among other things) for on-the-go users.