UKNM: sticky portals

[Steve Bowbrick]

I'm going to save Ray's comment on this topic: "...six or seven big portals

is as many as there ever will be..." because it sounds entertainingly like

an earlier seer's "...we anticipate the global requirement for computers

will never exceed seven..." (paraphrase).


The location of your portal seems to me to be the big problem right now.

Portals are still - universally, I think - constituted as destinations,

with all of the associated problems of attracting and keeping users in a

sea of me-too content.


Seth Godin from Yoyodyne says that there are eight million web sites and

eighty million web users so if you have an audience of greater than ten you

are already a success. You should give your eleventh punter a Vauxhall

Astra - you're ahead of the curve. Getting from there to breakeven is the

tough part - witness the Mutually Assured Destruction of spiralling

'exclusive partner' fees.


How about a portal that sidesteps the apocalyptic maths by creeping down

the chain to the user's PC and lodging there - in the browser. A

'persistent' or 'sticky' portal that stays in view no matter where you are

or what you're doing. Example: Neoplanet - Bigfoot's Explorer Shell which

is going down a storm with ISPs and Media Owners in the US where they fear

the implacable Godin equation more than anything.


Neoplanet is up to 2.0 and has been adopted as standard distribution by

160+ US ISPs, some very large. Neoplanet's footprint is tiny (it uses

Explorer's parser/renderer) and it keeps a set of centrally-controlled,

hierarchically-organised bookmarks in view at all times, along with an ad

opportunity and custom branding. It's like an embedded mini-Yahoo, present

at all times, on- or off-line. I think it's a powerful model. Take a look -

I'd welcome a discussion of its merits or otherwise.




http://www.neoplanet.com (interest declared: Webmedia Group is a

shareholder in Bigfoot)


Steve

--

Steve Bowbrick                                      Webmedia Group

0171 494 3177                                         0468 257 570




http://www.webmedia.com/steve

stevewebmedia [dot] com (mailto:stevewebmedia [dot] com)

http://www.bowbrick.com - he's very advanced for his age...