Pageflakes 2.0, the new version of the popular personalized startpage, is now live. The biggest change is a fresh, appealing design that's a hundred times better than the previous one - the interface was always Pageflakes' biggest downside, and this was a much-needed improvement. They've also created a neat walkthrough that helps you populate your page when you sign up, allowing you to choose which elements are included by default. Don't like the header color? You can change that, too, with six possible color options.
Pageflakes is one of a few sites that put RSS feeds, YouTube videos, web search, a to-do list and other modules in one place. The top three in this space are generally considered to be Netvibes, Pageflakes and Protopage, which is scheduled to launch its V3 release soon. All three are European, as is the new entrant WebWag, which recently began offering Yahoo search within your own page. Netvibes is sometimes said to be the leader, but frankly measuring these things is impossible - not only do they automatically create a page for every visitor (which would inflate the number of "users"), but they also use so much ajax that it would be pointless to count the pageviews. As a result, Pageflakes have decided not to play the stats game for now, and we can't really compare the services. What does seem likely is that all the top players will see some success - you can criticize them for lacking a business model, but any site that commands this much attention from the user is extremely valuable (as the Google-YouTube deal proves). Even if they wanted to shun ads, Pageflakes and Netvibes could still charge companies who want modules built for their services.
Another thing to note: in the startpage market, the independent companies seem to be innovating much faster than the big guys: could Google or Microsoft be interested in acquiring a startpage, despite having their own products in this space?
Related: Ajax homepages.
Disclosure: Pageflakes is a Mashable sponsor.
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