Word of the Day: De-portalize

De-portalize has cropped up in a few posts recently.

• The De-Portalization of the Internet (aka What I Would Do If I Were Running Yahoo!) – A VC
• What would radical transparency mean for Wired? (Part 1) – The Long Tail

The basic premise is this: The value of a portal was in its ability to aggregate together everything in one place, the failure of the portal was the inability of the portal to get people to information quickly. Rather than using portals, people preferred search, once they have found something they then use tagging, adding favourites and subscription.

I have never been a fan of portals. I’ve never seen the point, they’ve never been able to answer the question that I’m asking. I consume a steady stream of information, most of it via subscription, there are then a number of sites that I go to, but most of them are accessed via favourites, the rest of the time I use search.

The emerging generation are exactly the same. Emily (10) accesses a few games on the Internet, she never remembers the URL of them, she relies on Google to get her there.

One of my pastimes is to operate the web site of our church. More than 50% of the traffic comes to the site via search, another 10 is referral. The other 40% is people who come direct, but I’m sure many of them are using favourites, I know I am. The front page stands as a place for information, but I’m really more concerned with the content, because that’s where people are getting to via search.

I’m not sure that there really is a de-portalization going on, I don’t think that the Internet was ever truly portalized.

(Speaking as an English person I find the need to create new words for things a bit of a mystery, especially when they end “ize”.)