Portal.. means gate. I mean it used to be a 'gateway' to all source of information, such as search, news, e-mail, personal blog, internet community and so many other stuff..
Yes, this was the period when yahoo ruled the world.
However, now what do we have? Google and facebook... Google took the function of Search and e-mail, and facebook took the function of blog and community.. I believe that if Google buys Facebook, they will once again become total package, that is, portal.
So here is my question.. if a portal can provide everything in one stop service, what is the reason that they are sharply declining in US market?
Unlike US, actually in Asia (China, Japan, Korea.. and others) portal remains strong and google is doing awful.. What is the factor that makes american walk away from portal?
3 comments:
Good point Hoonmo. I think there is an inverse relationship between the traffic to Portal and Social. Internet users are depending on their friends and subscribed news sources to discover stories and links in their social feeds. This user-curation process fills the need for using a portal. Yahoo, AOL and other portal sites are suffering as a result.
This is so true and became very apparent with the death of Amy Winehouse the other weekend. Facebook got a ton of press after her death for actually breaking the story, while the portal sites lagged hours behind in their coverage. Of course this makes sense- articles by real journalists need to be written, proof-read, approved, etc before going live, whereas on a social media site anyone can post or tweet a headline and have it go live 2 seconds later. It'll be interesting to see what the future implications of this trend are on the art of jounalism.
Actually, I believe Facebook and Twitter are portals. For example, my friends' feeds give me the current news that I need. When I see a few people posting the same status update on their feeds then there must be some truth to that story. The same goes with Twitter, Twitter is a portal for all of the different followers I have. Their constant updates of different things provide real time news.
I don't think portal is dead, portal is just being redefined by the new trend in technology. The only thing that is not on Facebook and Twitter is the ability to view your emails but all of the information is there just a matter of following the right things and categorizing them.
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