Netvibes

[lucy24]

Has anyone learned anything new since last September [webmasterworld.com]?

193.189.143.235 - - [23/Mar/2017:16:30:06 -0700] "HEAD /ebooks/beeton/ HTTP/1.1" 403 284 "-" "Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com)" 
193.189.143.235 - - [23/Mar/2017:16:30:06 -0700] "GET /ebooks/beeton/ HTTP/1.1" 403 1810 "-" "Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com)" 

The question arises because, some hours after this Netvibes visit (triggered by an RSS feed that I was monitoring) I found a human from an unrelated IP giving the netvibes “dashboard” as referer.

[keyplyr]

The software is a multi-lingual Ajax-based start page or web portal offering users a dashboard for Brand Monitoring, E-Reputation Management, Product Marketing, Community Portals & Personalized Workspaces. Company is based in Paris/San Francisco.

[lucy24]

Is that good or bad? ;)

[keyplyr]

Good or bad pertaining to access to your files? Well I'm not aware of any of your web interests publishing ads, nor have I the impression you have company branding that would benefit from Social Media enhancement, so unless there's something you have going I'm unaware of, you may want to consider not granting netvibes utilities access as it may not serve your interests.

However, you might consider that regular users & office workers (Community Portals) may drag some attribute in their UA string if they come directly from Netvibes (example: dashboard) so blocking conditions may need to be specific. I don't have any info about those users. All I've seen is the bot(?) which I currently allow because of my interests.

[lucy24]

you may want to consider not granting netvibes utilities access as it may not serve your interests

Well, since I'm on header-based access, the robot got blocked by default. And the human was just a referer, nothing sketchy in the UA.

The odd thing was that they came in citing Netvibes as a referer--even though the robot had been blocked. Now, if there were someone who actually uses the utility and can describe what the "dashboard" looks like, that might shed some light. I'm picturing "Hm, that title* looks interesting, dunno why the preview doesn't show up but I'll go check it out anyhow".

Even though I don't currently run ads or sell anything, I generally consider it useful in the long term for humans to visit. You never know what it might lead to.


* I don't see the RSS feed as such, but I'm guessing it contains about the same information as the equivalent www page--that is, not just an URL but a line of description.

[keyplyr]

...describe what the "dashboard" looks like

Looks like a Chevy :)

Use your favorite image-search. There's lots of images of the "netvibes dashboard." The user builds their own choosing from the above mentioned utilities.