People have been predicting the death of the portal for a while now. Is the consumer portal really dying or would Mark Twain have concluded that "the rumor of MyYahoo!’s death is greatly exagerated"?
Will MyYahoo and the other big "portal" pages where I get my daily what’s-happening-in-the-world-summary be replaced by more social, random sources of information. Is my attention going to be driven primarily by my online friends or the New York Times and other "authoratative" sources of news and editorial?
Are my visits to digg for an update on what the mob is paying attention to right now more compelling than the RSS feeds on a portal page. Is a stop by the Huffington Post for some attitude and POV and a swing by YouTube in case Will Ferrell does another George Bush impersonation on Saturday Night Live more convenient than an editor packing it up on the front page of the Washington Post? Will I just hang with my friends on Facebook and get updates when they post something to their pages?
What’s the emerging model? Is it primarily "social" or primarily "editorial"? Is there going to be one place that brings together the news, enterntainment and tools for me i.e. a "portal"? Does Google News stand a chance as it crawls and filters or will I just tune out the big aggregators and increasingly listen to my social networks? Said differently: who wins the fight for my attention, my friends or MyYahoo!
-hans peter