Slightly off topic...
This was an article posted from the SEEK thread re: Internet Portals..
Again it just reinforces the increasing dominance and power of the INTERNET!
"Another Article About PORTALS...
This is lifted from Industry Standard through a
thoroughly wonderful marketing site called www.emarketing.com...
*******
Wouldn't You Like to be a Portal Too?
In the latest effort to build traffic, everyone from American Express to Business
Week is offering free e-mail and other portal-like features on their Web sites. Will
the fizz go flat?
By Mark Gimein
When was the last time you went into Bloomingdale's department store to check your
mail?
Bizarre as the question might seem, it highlights the strangeness of the latest
marketing fad to sweep the Web. As so-called portal sites such as Yahoo and Excite
rack up nine-figure increases in market capitalization and Hotmail reports that 100,000
people signed up for its free e-mail service in one day, Web sites of all stripes are
rushing to assemble a mix of features in the hope of driving - and keeping - more
traffic. The latest irresistible gimmick: e-mail.
First, there was mail from your ISP. Then there was your company's e-mail server.
Then came Juno, Hotmail, Net@ddress and their many imitators. Then came free mail
on Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek and Lycos.
Now Web users can get mail from Discovery Online. They can get it from American
Express. Soon, thanks to a deal announced late last month, they'll be able to get it from
Business Week's online site. Next up: the airlines.
What's going on here?
Here's what: Four years into the life of the Web as a marketing tool, designers,
marketers and new-media mavens are still struggling with the question of what a Web
site is. Nobody wants an on-screen brochure. Everybody wants a destination.
Pursuing that elusive goal, Web developers have latched onto each new idea with
almost religious fervor.
Consider some fads that have swept the online world: "Favorite links," the original
Web fad offering up long lists of useless sites; the
navigate-this-site-as-if-you're-going-on-an-adventure site; the site with an
automatically updated news feed. And don't forget about "push."
The favored Web model right now is the "portal," a site that bundles together features
like message boards, news and e-mail to give customers a reason for returning.
Spurred by the success of Yahoo, portals have become so hot that Zona Research has
created a whole research area devoted to "portalnomics."
Until recently, search engines were the primary portals. Now, it seems, everyone wants
to be a portal of some sort, from PC makers like Gateway - which offers a start page at
gateway.net and an ISP service - to Citibank, which is building a financial gateway of
its own on the Net.
As Web-based mail has swept the primary portal sites, the mania has started to filter
down through the rest of the Net. If it works for Yahoo, Web developers think, why
can't it work for me?
As Isabel Maxwell, president of free e-mail provider CommTouch Software, describes
it, adding branded mail to your Web site is a no-brainer. It brings customers in and
keeps them there. It encourages people to visit your site at the beginning or end of the
day. It gives your site a share of traffic that would otherwise have gone to a dedicated
Web mail service like Hotmail. And, of course, it's a service to users who think it's
cooler to have an address at PGA.com - the Professional Golfers' Association of
America, a CommTouch client - than at Hotmail.
Maxwell's pitch is alluring. It's part solid fact: "E-mail isn't just a killer app. It's a global
phenomenon. It's by far the 'stickiest' application on the Web." It adds an appealing
smidgen of pop psychology: "In life, one has multiple personalities. People genuinely
do have two identities, or three, or four." And the rhetorical gusto resonates with
marketing executives. CommTouch has sold branded e-mail to a mix of clients that
includes The Jerusalem Post, Japanese telecom company NTT, college community site
Animalhouse.com, Business Week and the PGA.
Maxwell believes this is just the beginning. All the major airlines have told her they
want their own branded e-mail, she says. She predicts that when Web-based mail
providers can offer secure communication - a feature that CommTouch could
announce as early as this week - banks and other financial services companies will
rush to add it to their sites.
Free e-mail isn't bad. People can forward their office e-mail to a free account and check
it from the road. For sites, the up-front expenditure can be minimal; Business Week
Online General Manager David Smith says that in deals like this, the magazine almost
always shares ad revenue rather than paying cash.
The Web's previous hot ideas weren't intrinsically bad, either. Each of them worked in
certain situations on certain sites.
In 1995, for example, telecom competitors AT\T and MCI both launched promotional
Web sites. AT&T's site featured a raft of goodies, including links to libraries of
paintings on the Web and a sophisticated development of the "favorite links" idea
that originated with Justin Hall's famous Justin's Links From the Underground.
Meanwhile, MCI built a virtual home for Gramercy Press, a fictional small press
featured in MCI's business advertising. Users could wander through the site, click on
objects and learn more about the characters in the commercials. The site was well
received by the media.
Nothing remains of these two sites. Of course, nearly every Web site has gone
through a major overhaul or two since 1995, so maybe it's not fair to single out the
early players.
Instead, consider a more recent development - the withering of "communities," cyber
gathering places that corporate site developers hoped would make their home pages
lively, active centers for discussion of their customers' interests and, not
coincidentally, their company's products.
A year ago, the success of online community sites like The Motley Fool and Tripod
was noted in an in_uential cover story in Business Week and in Net Gain, a popular
book by John Hagel. A rash of interest in message boards and chat among corporate
sites followed.
Results have been markedly subpar. An elaborate system of bulletin boards on the
Warner Books site draws about one message a day. Citibank's most popular board
drew only five posts in May.
Bulletin boards and chat rooms have been only small elements in the operation of sites
that are considered pacesetters in creating online communities. Links to a "Pen Pals"
area on online computer dealer Cyberian Outpost's site no longer work.
Garden.com, a vendor of gardening supplies and accessories, was praised in Business
Week for adding features like chat and bulletin boards to its Web site. But with a
typical Garden.com chat drawing no more than 25 to 30 people, it's hardly a sterling
example of a community site.
For media entities like the Discovery Channel, the combination of entertainment,
information and access to a community is the product. Banks and airlines that want to
become portals to sell products will find the road even rougher.
Says Thomas Hicks, publisher of Discovery Online, which offers a full slate of
community features: "It was like push. Everyone wanted to get into that. But there was
a lot of work involved. Communities are very fickle. They will move on if there's not
underlying support."
The rapid demise of Electric Minds, an online community developed by Howard
Rheingold, is another example of how even well-conceived community ideas can be
brutally difficult to implement, even for cyber pioneers.
E-mail might look like a safe bet now, but watch out. Sabeer Bhatia, general manager of
Microsoft's Hotmail, could stand to gain from marketing's private label e-mail, but he's
deeply skeptical. He believes that Web sites that are not planning to present
themselves as full-_edged online services have no business offering e-mail. He has no
plans to cobrand his technology.
"The majority of [America Online members] still use AOL primarily for e-mail. Yahoo
and its competitors are trying to be complete online services. They're trying to capture
the value of the e-mail traffic. But the strategy absolutely will not work for nonportal
brands. What's the value? I don't see the connection," Bhatia says.
Fads are seductive. It seems that the owners of big Web sites believe they can just
copy the best features from AOL, The Motley Fool or Yahoo, put it all together and
get the best of everything.
"It remains to be seen who will replace whom," Business Week Online's Smith says
wryly.
It's a nice dig at the portal potentates of new media. But copying Yahoo won't be the
way to beat it.
SO YOU WANNA BE A PORTAL?
Marketers looking to beef up their sites have lots of places to turn.
SERVICE
PROVIDER
CLIENTS
News
NewsEdge
AT&T, DEC, Toshiba
NewsAlert
Wells Fargo, Datek Online, Dreyfus
Chat
iChat
Merrill Lynch, IBM, Xerox
The Palace
Egghead, FORE Systems, MGM
Bulletin
Boards
Well
Engaged
Kaiser Permanente, Warner Music Group,
Amazon.com
EShare
CUC International, Pfizer, 1-800-Flowers
E-mail
USA.net
American Express
CommTouch
Business Week, Advance Publications
Search
Excite
Chevron, ACLU, Adobe Systems
Infoseek
Sun Microsystems, Sony Online
Alex Lash contributed to this story." |
