Here is the response of my email to WCTI
The focus we are referring to is a focusing in on an exact market to target with the portal site WordCruncher plans to offer. WordCruncher is going to offer a portal site to meet the needs of business professionals. That means the content, and add on portal features will be material that is prudent for everyday work and research of the professional world. Focused or "verticle" portal sites are services set up to allow an exact demographic market to be targeted, allowing WordCruncher the opportunity to offer a site to meet exact needs. Below you will find an article published by Red Herring on "Verticle Portal Sites".
VERTICAL PORTALS AIM FOR WORLD DOMINATION
By Peter D. Henig
Red Herring Online
November 3, 1998
LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA -- Are vertical portals the future of the Web?
A few Internet entrepreneurs thought so, and argued their case with gusto at the Red Herring's NDA '98 conference. CEOs, venture capitalists, and tech luminaries watched the fireworks as Animalhouse.com, Deja News, and Epicentric staked their claims.
Despite the assaults by these startups, Netscape's (NSCP) Mike Homer defended the horizontal portals with some spirit. The trend to vertical portals, however, might be stronger than all the resources the browser company is pumping into Netcenter.
World domination
Panelists discussing the trend offered up an afternoon of military clichés that would have made MacArthur proud.
Jay Alan Samit, president of college-kid site Animalhouse.com, said vertical portals were good at keeping the audience coming back for more.
"Know who your audience is, and know what their needs are," exclaimed the executive.
And what are the needs of Animalhouse.com's audience, the college community?
"Jobs, sex, housing, entertainment, links to the outside, and passing grades -- and not necessarily in that order," said Mr. Samit. "And if we can satisfy all of those needs, then we've got you."
And once it's got you nabbed? "Total world domination, that's our goal," said Mr. Samit.
Internet firepower
While Animalhouse.com laid its plans, Deja News emphasized its content arsenal. Its repurposed newsgroup feeds feature 30 million people discussing 80,000 subjects.
"We cover the broadest range of subjects and are a virtual archive of the gray matter of the universe," said Deja News president and CEO Guy Hoffman.
But are tons of gray matter enough to create a vertical portal? Epicentric CEO Ed Anuff, a founder of Wired Digital's HotBot search engine, thinks you need more.
Epicentric provides software and services to make it easier for companies to set up portal-like Web sites for employees and customers -- your typical intranet-building pitch, in other words.
But Epicentric marketer Oliver Muoto put his own military spin on what his company does: "We are the arms dealers in the portal wars."
No respect
Poor Mike Homer.
"Try as he might to generate some respect for Netscape's Netcenter, the Netscape executive vice president and general manager had a tough fight on his hands as he defended the role of "horizontal" portals -- the familiar sites borne out of search engines like Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek, and Lycos.
Jason Pontin, editor in chief of the Red Herring, put Mr. Homer on the defensive by asking him to convince the audience why vertical portals don't work.
"I think I'm being set up," cracked Mr. Homer.
He cited such milquetoast trends as high growth in Internet traffic, a logical cap on the size of any vertical portal, and new network linkages built into Netscape's latest browser. Still, Mr. Homer found it tough to battle back against the vertical portal trend.
"Just out of curiosity, and I hate to ask this, but even with 70 million users, what's the average amount of time a user spends on the site?" asked Mr. Pontin.
"The average length of time is about seven and a half minutes," answered Mr. Homer.
"That's fairly bad, wouldn't you say?" shot back Mr. Pontin.
You could almost hear the shells whistling down.
Brett Bell
Investor Relations Coordinator
Wordcruncher Internet Technologies, Inc.
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