According to Markus Spath of Blognation the most popular site in Germany right now is Pageflakes.
Though I find iGoogle more to my personal tastes I've always been fond of Pageflakes. I think they're probably the most innovative portal company out there but they've managed to walk the line between being innovative and still making the site easy to use.
A few things I specifically appreciate about Pageflakes...
- They go out of their way to localize: Sure iGoogle can tell me what the weather is if I give them a zip code but Pageflakes actually knows what my local newspaper is by auto detecting my location and includes that feed on my page by default. It also queries flickr for any pages tagged with my city and puts a preconfigured flickr widget up. Finally, just to out-do Google it puts up a custom widget using Google maps to show me all the events in my area. Pretty impressive for 0 configuration.
- Shared Pages: The ability to share a portal page with a group of people is actually a pretty powerful one and one I'm surprised doesn't get more face time in portal discussions.
- Built in RSS/Atom Reader: It certainly has a ways to go before it catches up with the likes of Google Reader but even now you have to admire the simplicity of it. For a "starter kit" reader it isn't bad.
As I said above, I don't use Pageflakes because I can configure iGoogle to do what I need it to but for those who are not so technically inclined I think Pageflakes does a good job of helping them harness the power of a portal page. If my grandmother asked me what start page she should use I wouldn't think twice before recommending Pageflakes.
Also I have to admit that, as a .Net Developer, I get a kick out of seeing a successful site written in C#. See, not every startup needs to use LAMP.