FrostFireHive Launches Custom Start Pages

Today marks the launch of FrostFireHive, a customizable, personal start page service.

This new service is entering a crowded arena, with competition from existing services such as iGoogle, NetVibes, and PageFlakes, all of which seem to have more features and more options than FrostFireHive currently offers.

The main goal of this free homepage service seems to be to make the process as simple and easy as possible. Will it be enough to help the service stand out though?

Company execs notified us that they performed a poll of 600 people before beginning this project and found that "of those 600 people (across all ages and genders), only 14% understand how to get going in the generic start sites like Google,Yahoo, Netvibes etc."

“We will see a move away from generic start pages as niches need guidance with their content. Single page aggregators are too rigid and generic customizable pages offer little help to users. [Our] default start page consists of basic instructions that can be removed once a user is familiar with the site,” said Chris Frost, FrostFireHive’s chief executive.

I have not gotten a chance to take a really in-depth look at the details of the service, but from the front page, it seems very similar to NetVibes, although the latter offers a more eye-pleasing interface.

FrostFireHive is in beta though, so expect new features and abilities as it grows. In its press release, the company hinted at a future social sharing aspect of the site.

“We will shortly be encouraging users to share their creations and attract third party developers to increase our depth of widgets.  Offering social interaction is crucial to the future of Frostfirehive.com as this will provide users with guidance for their personal pages from people they can trust.  This social networking will benefit the users and the community.” said Frost.

It will take a lot to become a stronghold in an area that is so heavily saturated with services. If more users find it easy, FrostFireHive may just have what it takes to succeed.