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De-Portalization (sorry for that word)
Keith Teare ran a post today about the de-portalization trend that I talked about in my post last week. I am sorry for using that word. We can do better. As Keith says, its not about the death of portals, they will continue to exist for as long as I can see. But this is about new places on the Internet that will capture more attention over time and more of the growth. So I would love to find a better name for this trend. Let's see if Jarid Lukin can do it again (he coined freemium which I continue to love).
December 10, 2006 Venture Capital and Technology | Comments (14)
Comments
The image that I'm getting is one of the break-up of empires into constituent countries of different sizes and evolving influence. This conjures up words like nationalism and, from the Russian example, perestroika and glasnost. None of these are the right answer but maybe they'll spark someone else's imagination.
Posted by: John Dodds | Dec 10, 2006 5:31:51 PM
'Restination'? Hmmm, maybe I should leave the neologism game to others...
Posted by: greg | Dec 10, 2006 7:48:39 PM
The process-which seems painfully obvious in terms of the forces involved-is a function of the increasing sophistication of web users. They are starting to realize how much better the internet is outside the bounds of Yahoo and its ilk. It is the same force that brought people out of AOL into the wonderful world of the open internet. So whatever we call this, I vote we try and label the cause of this diversifying force rather then its symptoms.
Posted by: Zach Coelius | Dec 10, 2006 9:16:53 PM
Modulization. It is about brining to bear interactive information to a single presentation, or malleable gui. The information is aware of the other parts and can share and react to gui manipulations.
Perhaps "Communization" is a better term.
Posted by: Joseph Peffer | Dec 11, 2006 6:51:16 AM
I still think this is kind of about pushing the portal to the end points. With that in mind - perhaps Yahoo needs to adopt a mass portalization, rather than a deportalization trends. As per John Dodds above, portal federalization. endportalization? mine are all terrible...
Posted by: James Governor | Dec 11, 2006 7:37:16 AM
When Napster 1.0's early team was forming the term "file-sharing" was not used, and we used to struggle with what to call what Napster offered. "Distributed Aggregation" was a term in vogue in the office for awhile, as silly as it may sound next to "file-sharing." We later lampooned it, because of how oxymoronic and awkward it soon looked by comparison.
I was reminded of this in the above post, and in passing, "Distributed Aggregation" is not a horrible choice for the above-described trend, as long as you can accept the oxymoronic nature of it.
Otherwise Clay Shirky's "meganiche" term, the meme of a recent Wired article, is the only other term I've seen...he owns this term on Google, which remains blissfully "un-bidded upon," not likely for long.
Posted by: Chris | Dec 11, 2006 9:42:59 AM
Part of me feels I should just pull a Barry Sanders or Lance Armstrong and retire at the top of my game. But, the fear of going down in the neologism record books as a one hit wonder just won't let it happen. So, to see my thoughts, check out the Alacra blog...
Posted by: Jarid | Dec 11, 2006 10:29:51 AM
Does anyone know what happened to Keith Teare's post? The link is not working?
Posted by: David Henderson | Dec 11, 2006 10:32:00 AM
I see it as the growth of content islands. Internet users are more savy as to where the content their looking for is and less "googling it". If I hear about a funny commercial at a meeting or lunch I hit youtube to find it. Kids who hear a new band tend to hit that bands myspace page. Everyone has their own set of islands they hop around to and to me it seems rare that any two are the same.
Posted by: Shawn McCollum | Dec 11, 2006 3:48:50 PM
Extending the analogy...(without pretense of specific strategies for Yahoo):
Are the foothills rising or is terrain getting flatter as the 'planet' grows?
Think physics, not Tom Friedman in this case.
The growing mass of content and increased usage of the web diminishes the relative not the real size of the Yahoo 'mountain'.
As a sphere grows the surface flattens, the horizon extends and fixed objects and spaces on it appear relatively smaller.
So Yahoo may still have the 28% of searches but they vector out to a far larger sphere than in years past.
Changing metaphors, we seem to be jumping from the same diving boards into a much larger pool...with more swimming for each dive.
Posted by: jonathan trumper | Dec 11, 2006 5:17:46 PM
Portable portals
Posted by: Brian | Dec 12, 2006 1:12:18 AM
All these buzz words give me a headache. True innovation in the same sense that we use the noun "disuption", almost always comes from the margins: rarely the center. These buzz words mostly emanate from professional prognosticators who, if past experience can be relied on, are generally wrong, about almost everything. Deportalization to me can be summed up in two simple words: master channels.
Posted by: Derick Harris | Dec 12, 2006 2:02:43 AM
Derick,
I've worked in the entertainment business for ...well, many years...big innovation, new forms, great artists always emerge from the fringes; Many folks say the best musicians or new music forms (Rock>Disco>Punk>Rap) are pulled into the mainstream. My experience is it is the other way around, with the mass market 'glomming' on to what was once the fringe.
-
I agree with you about the prognosticators, but there is a difference between a new buzz word being inflicted on us and that elegant analogy or name which seems so accurate we just glom on to it. (Glom...a real word?)
Is 'de-portalization' a result of..'glomming'? Glommunicating? Glommeraction? - Social conglomeration...
Having gone way too far I'll stop at that, leaving the elegant solutions to the truly inspired.
Apologies for a bigger headache.
Posted by: JYT | Dec 12, 2006 6:00:03 PM
Is seems to me just de-centralization
Creating niche and regional outlets to better serve particular customers.
@Chris
I have coined 2 terms myself in recent weeks, and sure I retain top spot in the search engines with the terms because no one else is using them.
Google Feast
Google Banquet
At least my terms are based on Google Juice.
Many of the large portals have actually been decentralized in search engine terms for years, because different services are using different subdomains.
Posted by: Andy Beard | Dec 13, 2006 4:09:00 AM
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