|
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Yes, that's right. I just coined a new web word: Ajaxy. Write it down. All you other word coiners out there... you're on notice.
Anyway, Yahoo! is finally getting with the times and has built in some Ajax functionality into My Yahoo! Users can now move around components with drag and drop, and you can supposedly view entire news articles on the My Yahoo! page without leaving the page, as with Netvibes, although it doesn't seem to work for me at the moment. (Upon further research, Yahoo! has apparently removed this non-working functionality; it will surely return after the kinks are worked out).
All of this is certainly in response to the proliferation of purely Ajax-driven personal portal pages, which are far more engaging than the stodgy old static pages like Yahoo!'s. Old school portals like Yahoo know they're falling behind and they're scrambling to catch up.
My favorite of these neuvo-portals (there's another new word... I'm on a roll tonight) is still Netvibes, which continues to out-innovate its competitors. Seems like they add a neat new widget every day, and they promise big things to come. Watch this space!
The big winner of this could very well be the news organizations that makes it as easier than the others to integrate with the new wave of portals. This will be true because the methods of delivery, which outfits like CNN use as a competitive weapon won't be important if everyone uses a personal portal.
As for the new winners, I would bet on the organizations that provide the wire services like the Associated Press and Reuters. Other big winners could be the news aggregators like Topix.net and new players like Newsvine and blog networks, which are basically open source news wires.
Some say that the portal is about to make a strong resurgence, and I believe it. I don't really even use My Yahoo anymore thanks to the robustness and ease of use of Netvibes. Considering my strong ties to Yahoo!, that's saying something.
Posted by
Cory Kleinschmidt
View Posts by Category |
|
D'oh!
|
