Dec

4

Are Portals Really Dead?

December 4, 2006 |

A VC wonders if the ear of web portals such as Yahoo has ended. The answer, I think, is a qualified yes. Those of us comfortable with the web probably haven’t used an old-style portal in years. I can actually not remember when I last saw Yahoo’s front page.

However, don’t we have a bunch of new portal players on the market? Netvibes, Pageflakes, Goowy etc. What are those, if not portals - very flexible and personalized portals, but portals nevertheless.

Also, looking at the 40-60 year old generation that didn’t grow up with the web and only uses it sporadicly (that is, maybe every other day or so). Most of them still use Yahoo and AOL - those are the brands they grew up with.

And just one more caveat. Supposedly, young kids today are so comfortable with the web? I call BS. I work with 18 year olds every day. Most know about MySpace, many don’t. Try to get them to install a piece of software so they can read the pdf files I send them and they are lost. AIM - of course. Meebo? Never heard of it. IM to them is AIM and that’s that.

In many ways, large parts of the younger generation are just as techno-challenged as the older generations are.

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1 Comment so far

  1. Franck Poisson on December 5, 2006 4:48 am

    Clever post, really agree. the Web 2.0 portals such as Webwag and others will be classic, when Francis Bacon will be as much popular and famous as Picasso ;-)

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