Since I have not been able to find a satisfactory answer to your
clarification. I have decided to pull out my answer so as to charge
you accordingly. I will just post my former answer as a comment in
case you may need it or so as to serve as an aid to a future
researcher who may take on this question.
Note: Some documents are in PDF format so you would need the Adobe
Acrobat Reader to view them. If you haven’t had this installed on your
computer please download it at
(http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html).
Our very first link will serve as a guide to our discussion on
personalized portals since it partly answers some of the questions you
have put forward.
The article the “Promise of the Daily Me” By J.D. Lasica is an amazing
look at the workings and future of personalized portal pages. The
article could be obtained from
(http://www.well.com/user/jd/personalization.html).
To save you time, let us examine some of the answers you are seeking
after. The major players in this segment of the web market are
mentioned. The article was done in 2001 so some of the companies
mentioned may have already closed or gobbled up by bigger rivals.
1. General Portals
“…Web portals such as My Yahoo, My Excite, My Netscape, My Lycos and
My Snap (now My NBCi) launched personalization services. Each portal
offered slightly different variations on the same pick-and-click
theme: Users could choose favorite news topics, stocks, sports teams,
horoscopes, TV listings, movie show times, lottery results and other
interests. Many of the services also featured message boards, chat
rooms, daily health tips, favorite Web sites, travel alerts and
convenient reminders of friends' birthdays or relatives'
anniversaries. Millions of us now use these personalized pages, often
as launch pads for our online forays every morning.”
“Such services have had some measure of success: Mention
personalization today and most people think of My Yahoo or My Excite.
But only 5 to 10 percent of users at the portals register for the My
services, perhaps because these first-generation tools only scratch
the surface of personalization. Invariably, they rely on the same
predictable wire services for general interest news. They require a
tedious form of checkbox personalization that drives away most users.
And they fall short of the promise, resulting in customization for the
masses but little in the way of true one-to-one personalization.”
2. News Publications
“A few online news organizations have followed the lead of the portals
— but only a few. The Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal,
Los Angeles Times, MSNBC and CNN are among those that have offered
personalized news in some form. A few others, like the Washington
Post, are just now arriving at the party.”
3. MetaBrowsing Websites (Octopus.com does not work anymore)
“Companies like Octopus, OnePage and Clickmarks have sprung up on the
premise that consumers and businesses want to be able to personalize
and speed up the tedious task of sorting through news and information
on dozens of Web sites.”
“I happen to like a simple little jewel called Quickbrowse. While
services like OnePage and Octopus retrieve content from different
sources and reformat it on a personal news page, Quickbrowse preserves
the original look and feel of a publisher's page, including
advertising.”
4. Shopping Sites
“Web sites such as Amazon and CDnow have used collaborative filtering
technologies almost from day one, personalizing the book- and
CD-buying process for millions of users. With enough technical
resources, a CD site could take on a hipper look if it knew that a
teenager was visiting; a jazz fan would find racks of Sonny Rollins or
Roy Hargrove awaiting him, not Moby or Garth Brooks.”
You must also read the companion article by the same author this time
about personalized news sites. This article discusses the various
value prepositions of the major personalized news sites.
The second coming of personalized news
http://www.well.com/user/jd/OJR-second-coming.html
Due to the comings and goings of dot com companies and industry
consolidation, is there still room for another personalized portal
service? It is obvious that there are still some markets which are not
yet tapped or are not being served enough. Aside from making a
personal service like My Yahoo, if you have the technology and a new
business plan maybe the following markets could be your goldmine.
1. Corporate or Enterprise Portals
“…an organization might have several defaults available to users such
as the marketer's portal, the finance portal, the researcher's portal
etc. However, all this choice is given within a certain framework. For
example, the basic layout structure is fixed, and the providers can
fix certain areas, for example by ensuring that corporate news and key
messages of the day are in prominent unalterable positions.”
Personal Portals: Still the Panacea? By David J. Skyrme
http://www.skyrme.com/updates/u60_f2.htm
For more on enterprise portals please read the article “Enterprise
Portals: The Future of the Portal Market Opportunity” at
(http://www.mediapps.fr/web/it.nsf/$$ftp/WPVAen/$file/WPVAen.pdf).
2. Wireless Portals:
(http://www.thinkmobile.com/Resource/Top/Wireless_Data/WAP/Portals/)
3. Wireless News and Mobile Services: One great example is an Avantgo
which has been reaping the rewards of the wireless revolution.
AvantGo-es Paid By Ryan Naraine
http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/1448191
Before the diving in to the personalized portal industry or what it
calls as an information montage, it will be helpful to take notes of a
study conducted by Microsoft Corporation and the University of
Washington.
“Users want one-click info access
– Users appreciated automatic display of links
– But links-only (two clicks) preferred over
embedded-content (one click)
• Montage load time important
– Portal/home page must load quickly
• Variety in displayed content better
Context enhances personalization
– Complex model preferred over simple
• What context is best?
– Time/date & topic of recent browsing
– Other applications running on computer
– User demographics
– More links displayed on links-only montage
Past accesses predict future browsing
– Montage often displayed appropriate content
• Longer-lived history would help
– Many revisited pages too infrequent in study
• Collaborative filtering would, too
– Montage could display content other, similar
users have viewed recently.”
The article also discusses future enhancements to the personalized
portal experience.
“More user control over utility evaluation
– User sets trade-offs in utility model
• Dynamic topic leveling
– More detail only in topics of interest
• Mixed-initiative montage
– User can directly add & delete candidates
– Montage automatically selects best
candidates and formats page”
Web Montage: A Dynamic, Personalized Start Page
http://www2002.org/presentations/anderson.pdf
Finally let us examine the market you would try to enter if let us say
you dive into the personalized start pages industry. In a fairly
recent article from USA Today dated 02/18/2002 it takes note of the
following:
“How popular are personalized features? Net traffic tracker Jupiter
Media Metrix tracked Yahoo's various ‘channels’ in December and found
that, after e-mail, instant messaging and searching, the My Yahoo
section was the fourth most popular area of Yahoo, visited by 3.2
million users a day.
Overall, Jupiter says, Yahoo is the top portal, with 71.9 million
users a month, of which 12.5% personalize. MSN is next with 69.4
million (8.7% personalize). Lycos gets 37.3 million visitors a month,
with 2.8% personalizing. AOL offers personalization in its dial-up
service.
Yahoo, MSN and Lycos say their personalized pages are drawing more
traffic these days — attributable partly to a lack of other options.
Last year, AltaVista, Excite, NBCi and Go either dropped
personalization entirely or dramatically scaled back their offerings."
"Microsoft Network introduced My MSN in October with a redesign to
make it easier to use. ‘Before, users put in their ZIP code but didn't
realize they could get local weather,’ MSN's Sarah Lefko says. ‘Now we
show a picture of their city and say here it is.’"
"What's happening with the personalized start pages is the same thing
that's happening elsewhere on the Web, says Forrester Research analyst
Jim Nail. ‘There's this implicit negotiation going on between sites
and consumers over what the value exchange will be. If they don't want
to pay for content, they'll have to give personal information instead.
And in order to get the information, portals need to give something
new in return, like the smaller ads on Lycos.’”
Personalized start pages build a better mousetrap by Jefferson Graham,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/2002/02/19/web-personal.htm
After all this, your inevitable question “Is there room for another
service?” Personally, I feel that there is, but the service has to be
better and you have to effectively put across your message through
marketing in a clever manner to challenge the big boys.
Search terms used:
Personalized pages future market share industry
Thanks for visiting us at Google Answers.
Regards,
Easterangel-ga |
