Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RagnBull who wrote (11051)	6/11/1998 10:04:00 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

Ragn, very interesting. So, everyone wants to be a portal? What's next? First, Yahoo was a manually compiled directory. It had lots of "search engine" competitors (arguably much more complete, BTW), so it became a content aggregator. Their competitors quickly followed, so they decided to become a, dare I say, "global media giant not unlike Disney/ABC" where the Yahoo "brand" would come to be known by all the world for its varied and high quality news, entertainment, information and commerce services. Once on the Web, the only site you need to know is Yahoo because it would be the center of the Internet universe, the "portal" through which everyone will access anything and everything. But wait. The others transform themselves as well and we have a real global media giant snapping up <g> most of one of the lesser portals for a few million bucks to go head to head with the big portals. And now we have financial services companies and airlines wanting to be portals too? What will Yahoo transform itself into next to differentiate itself? Oh, the article made a good point about e-mail being a "sticky app", meaning that if you can get people signed up and using your e-mail, they will hang around and use everything else. Since changing your e-mail is a hassle akin to changing your phone number, once you have them using it, they will stick with you as their "portal". Makes sense to me. Problem is, all these e-mail and "portal" services are free, as is most content, so you have to make your money from something else - selling products/services or selling ad space. Selling anything profitably over the Web, with a few exceptions like financial services, is an unproven concept, but selling ad space (profitably) is the least proven of them all. I do believe that the Web, its content and commercial uses will continue to grow in popularity and that the Internet can meet a variety of communications needs for consumers and businesses, but IMO the only proven model on the Internet, that is the only internet based industry that has demonstrated how it can and will reach consistent and meaningful profitability is the ISP business. The others are still experimenting and trying to come up with a profitable model. Regards, Bob PS: Did anyone notice all the "news" this morning about how RK reported Yahoo to have "about 30 million users during May" like it was some major achievement? Hmm, hasn't RK shown Yahoo as number one, with over 30 million users (as high as 32 mil I think) for several months now? Why is this reported as good news? Doesn't its apparent plateauing hint at slower growth?