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With about two million accesses a day, 250,000 users, and
39,000 links, Yahoo! is perhaps the largest and portal in the world. An ideal benchmark!
Internet is turning out to be the future way of life and
business. Portals–the gateways to the world of the Internet or the World Wide Web
(WWW)–are redefining and repositioning organisations and businesses. Whether one
would like to launch a "complete" or "segment-specific" portal depends
on one’s strategy to exploit the Internet opportunity. They can be subject specific
too like cricket, golf, gardening, etc., provided the content is of high quality for
differentiation.
The portal sites, like Yahoo!,
America Online (aol.com), Amazon.com,
etc., have proven themselves as true gateways–gateway to fortunes for their founders.
Most of them start with meagre resources. And not only for founders but for the users too.
Focus on Masses
Yahoo!, and Hotmail in particular, got their popularity by bringing free
e-mail–a revolutionary communication media–to the masses. Making the Net
popular. Yahoo, one of the most powerful search engines, also offers choice of other
search engines like Alta Vista, GoTo.com, HotBot, Infoseek, deja.com, etc. Features like
chat, message boards, and daily horoscopes are becoming popular due to their addictive
nature. Objective is to increase Net usage among the masses. The Netizens will depend more
and more on Internet not only for business but also for daily needs and interests.
The Making of Yahoo!
David Filo and Jerry Yang created Yahoo (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious
Oracle) in 1994, both Stanford University Ph.D. students, as a hierarchical index of the
WWW. Originally, Yahoo was started by its creators as a way to keep track of items of
their personal interest. Beginning with a Mosaic hotlist, it was gradually expanded. After
about hundred items, they could just scroll through it sequentially, and soon after, the
list was already too big to search. Tools were created to allow hierarchical
categorization of links much the same way as many of today’s browsers like Mosaic and
Netscape. It made locating previously visited links and adding new links much easier.
Subsequently, the list was made available on the Web to enable users to browse. The search
capability made it easier to locate specific entries.
Yahoo was never really listed anywhere–neither with
any of the "What’s New" pages nor posted to any newsgroups–and was
never advertised. It grew slowly through friends, and by word of mouth. Initially, there
were about a hundred accesses a day, and there was no
demand from the users to add their own links. Within about six months of starting, it was
realized that Yahoo was more than just a personal hotlist. Things really changed when the
ability was added for people to add their own links. Popularity grew when people linked to
it from their home pages. Also more functionality was added for wider appeal.
Originally, it was also not listed on any of the other
search sites, however, it soon got automatically listed with many of the search engin when
their spiders discovered it. It started being referred for finding specific information on
the Web, including in the newsgroups. Most users found it through the Web surfing on other
pages, thus, attaining its current popularity.
Things have been improving ever since; especially ease of
use and efficiency of search to cope up with growing number of users, and their widening
demographics. The graphics were also tweaked over time to make the pages as efficient as
possible in terms of load time.
With about two million accesses a day–more than
250,000 users and about 39,000 links–Yahoo! is perhaps the largest and most complete
portal in the world. An ideal benchmark.
Amazon.com—in its quest to become a complete information source on
books—has assimilated a huge database. Besides, providing wealth of information, it
is now one of the largest e-commerce sites. Yahoo and Amazon have been complementing each
other with Yahoo presenting Amazon on its pages.
In India, Rediff-on-the-Net (rediff.com)—emerging as
the Amazon of India, and Indiatimes.com took the lead. Rediff is probably the first in
India to really market itself including on TV.
Fighting Churn
Like other telecom operators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) too need to fight churn
and retain subscribers. A good portal creates not only an identity for the ISP, but also
helps bring in the advertising revenues. This allows an ISP to offer better package and
value to its customers. America Online has such a positioning.
In India, Mantra Online (mantraonline.com) seems to be
pursuing this track. In future, "personalisation" will play key role to develop
customer loyalty. It will lead to customer identifying with the service provider through
its portal.
Interactivity for Differentiation
To enter the Net, which portal one uses depends on its content. Whether it meets the
entire user’s needs—the free e-mail, a good search engine, news, business deals,
stock market, finance, and other personalisations. However, what is likely to
differentiate in future will be the interactivity and dynamism that a portal or site
offers. A static database will no more be enough. The users would prefer to get
on-the-spot solutions by putting in information. It would be the day of "actionable
content". With bandwidth to match.