Kent Newsome on technology, music and life

1/20/2006


Is There a Place for a Portal...

In this web 2.0 world?

Tom Morris (whose blog is one of the first things I read every morning) was talking earlier today about my mini-review of Web 2.0 applications. He made a good point about Netvibes and My Yahoo, saying there are really portals and not truly Web 2.0 applications.

Although I have only recently started talking about Web 2.0, having tried unsuccessfully to never use that phrase, I agree that Netvibes and My Yahoo are portals. And I agree that they are different from a lot of the other Web 2.0 applications we have been discussing.

Tom goes on to say, however, that he doesn't understand why anyone would use Netvibes or My Yahoo. He prefers the greater scale and flexibility of an RSS reader.

While I get most of my information via RSS feeds, I still use two portals. I use The Home Place, my personal portal, and My Yahoo every day because they are better at aggregating the non-RSS stuff I want to see every day. My My Yahoo page has my stocks and mutual funds on one side, the weather and sports scores on the other and news headlines in the middle. Some of those headlines are old media- AP, Reuters, USA Today, etc. And some are new media- blogs and other converted RSS feeds.

The Home Place has links to web sites that I used to visit all the time (ESPN, some newspapers, etc.) and links to my websites for easy access. It has a Google search box (which is now largely unnecessary in light of the Google Toolbar) and some other search boxes.

I guess My Yahoo is my newspaper alternative and The Home Place is my bookmarks alternative. Clearly, my RSS feeds have rendered a lot of what's on The Home Place unnecessary (for example, I now keep my blogroll at Bloglines). But my RSS feeds don't really give me the same stuff my My Yahoo page does- at least not yet. Granted, I could set up RSS feeds for my stocks and for weather and for news, but I like the fact it's all there on one handy screen.

So yes, they are portals, but I still need them. Or at least I think I do.

On a related Web 2.0 note, Virtual Karma has put together a complete list of Web 2.0 applications. It's a great reference for what's out there.

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Posted by Kent @ 1/20/2006 08:01:00 PM | Permalink

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2 Comment(s):

I'm not sure why it's important to say netvibes.com is a portal and not Web 2.0 like their mutually exclusive -- except that Tom thinks portals suck and (presumably Web 2.0) newsreaders don't. I'd have to disagree. I've used lots of newsreaders and I prefer netvibes. And I think the fact that it's interactive and uses Ajax makes it Web 2.0 enough for me.

By Anonymous Mathew Ingram, at 1/20/2006 9:09 PM  
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I'm sorry. I wasn't quite being clear when I wrote that (probably due to the fact I was on a packed commuter train - I should post links and not try to think!).

I use NewsRiver, Dave's RSS reader (which is very much _not_ Web 2.0). I also have a customised Google home page.

What I don't get is reading RSS on these homepages. My Google homepage has my Gmail and my search history (and a countdown to the shipping date for my new Mac), and the weather for London.

All of these things are basically non-RSS content and stuff which I don't need to be notified of the update of - if I miss yesterday's weather, it doesn't matter. If I miss, say, a blog post, that matters far more to me.

What RSS has done is actually changed the way I use the web to make most of the need for headlines on my homepage irrelevant and actually a hindrance to the way I prefer news. What would be good is if sites like My Yahoo! - which has a lot of newbie users - built a proper news aggregator.

Mathew: the reason why it's important (and I hope clarified), is because the way news is read and the way portals are used is different. Tommorow's weather forecast or how many days until I get my MacBook are different from the latest headlines.

Thanks again, Kent, for your reading - I love reading what you have to say (I'm especially enjoying your picks from Scoble's feeds).

By Anonymous Tom Morris, at 1/21/2006 4:52 PM  
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