Networks Are In, Portals Are Out
The contrarian in me surfaced last week when I read Rich Gordon’s advice to, “Build a network, not a destination.”
Rich is absolutely right, but the current network-building mania among news sites reminds me of the late-90s portal-building mania.
“Portal” is that all-encompassing term used to describe news sites’ efforts to build out verticals and create functions that extended beyond news content. It was important to develop these products, but there was a lot of me-too portal building. Many second- and third-movers repeated the mistakes of the early portal builders. That was certainly the case at Independent Media and The Moscow Times, where I was.
Today, when sites talk about building “networks” they’re usually talking about adding robust profiles and giving users ways to contribute content (Rich uses a broader notion of the word network). USA Today’s new site is a frequently cited example. Its superb commenting and ranking system brings the site alive.
Still, there are limitations to these first news-site networks — in particular, they are all closed networks. My profile on USAToday.com doesn’t reflect any of my activity on other networks and doesn’t give me the value of friends I have on other networks. It would be far more useful if it did.
Instead of producing clones of the USA Today site, sites that are still working on their networks should try to build on USA Today’s work — to incorporate the great interactivity, but with increased openness and connectedness to outside networks.
