The company was founded by former journalist Tariq Krim in 2005, who ran it with longtime European entrepreneur Pierre Chappaz until he left this past summer to work on another company called Wikio.

Netvibes is funded by the European VCs of Accel Partners and Index Ventures , as well as a smattering of U.S Web players like Marc Andreessen and others, to the tune of about $16 million.

Using a customizable ecosystem that allows a user to include any Web app–such as widgets, feeds, email, videos, blogs and now social-networking apps too–its goal of creating the personalized home page puts it in competition with other sites like Pageflakes, iGoogle and, of course, MyYahoo.

The site has upward of 12,000 feeds of all kinds and about 10 million registered users, aiming to make money via revenue sharing on the various apps used.

The business plan and the whole space, of course, is still developing, as a variety of players compete to become your first stop on the Internet with hopes of finding new ways to monetize that experience.

But here’s Netvibes CEO Krim discussing the whole thing:

It was a fancy gold-leaf setting for the gathering of Silicon Valley and European digital media execs, investors and entrepreneurs, a kickoff to two days of discussion about the state of tech and media in this glam town on the Riviera.

Why am I here? (No, not a boondoggle!)

Actually, to learn more about the most interesting European players, as Walt Mossberg and I consider whether to take our successful D: All Things Digital conference to Dublin next fall.

On my way to the dinner, I ran smack into Facebook bigwig Owen Van Natta and PR head Brandee Barker in front of the conference hotel. They had just flown in, as Van Natta is being interviewed here.

Though they looked horrified to see me as their first greeter, the pair were too exhausted to flee screaming from BoomTown’s usual stalking–which has now gone international–and went off for some much-needed sleep after a busy few weeks of Microsoft-shaking-down and social-ads-launching.

Nonetheless, even without them, Facebook and social networking were Topic A at the dinner among the attendees.

Tomorrow: Barry Diller on why he sliced and diced his Net assets and more.

Until then, here’s some cogent thoughts from four attendees–ubiquitous Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi, very sharp Richard Greenfield of Pali Capital, friendly Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim and charming FON founder Martin Varsavsky–in a video: