Friday, September 21, 2007

Why Portals Are So Over at AOL

From The New York Times - ... In a world of search, social networks and other forms of browsing, portals don’t serve the same function they once did. (See this quick take on Google’s approach to portals.) If you look at the breakdown of the traffic on Yahoo or AOL, you’ll see that by far the largest number of page views is on their e-mail services. The various content sections, news, movies and so on, are still huge but they are losing share of mind to smaller sites.

For advertisers, that want to bring their messages to the broadest possible audience, the home pages of portals have been the best option. In a fragmented world, however, Mr. Falco & Co. realize that to offer advertisers reach, they need to add a network of smaller sites to AOL’s own properties. And so they are putting the company’s existing advertising business—built on its Advertising.com unit and other acquisitions—in the spotlight. (I still wonder whether they are undercutting AOL’s successful efforts to build new specialized sites like Engadget or TMZ.) | Read full article

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