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Portal - or people -
control
THE Web has not taken long to lose its gloss. In less than two years the
biggest up-front sites have opted to become ugly, text-filled pages that ape telephone
directories.
Go to Telstra BigPond's home, or Excite Australia, ninemsn,
certainly Yahoo. They all have that dull but worthy
look. It is the look of the portal site. Depending on how you want to view things, portals
are either the greatest form of mind control invented, or the handiest help at navigating
the Web possible. On any given day I am prepared to accept either argument, as well as the
many shades of grey in between. The Web is too diverse and explosive a medium to allow a
fixed state of mind.
For example, I could easily decry portal sites as a way for big companies -- such as
Channel 9 and Microsoft through ninemsn -- to confine the entire surfing experience to
sites run by them and their associates. Ninemsn will direct me to Microsoft Hotmail, Dolly
magazine, and Channel 9 shows such as Sixty Minutes or the Footy Show. But no one dictates
that I have to follow these navigation paths. If I was watching TV and did not like what
was on Nine I would simply change channels. On the Web it is even easier plus there are
millions of choices.
Internet expert Jesse Berst of Ziff Davis Publishing recently raised the fear that portal
sites were taking over home pages and thereby robbing users of their surfing freedom. He
opened the subject up for feedback and was told, quite forcefully, by dozens of his
readers that he was wrong.
Even if portal home pages were trying to direct users down set paths that would result in
commercial gain for the proprietors, users had a very easy way out -- they could simply
change their home page. Quite right too. While arguments such as Berst's look plausible,
they ignore one basic that the Internet is teaching us every day -- it is a medium where
the user can reign.
This point was hammered home last week at the Netmedia conference in London which featured
an online media roundtable of European journalists, a cyberlaw lecture, a digital TV
roundtable, and the presentation of the UK's first online journalism awards.
The message from the conference was that the medium was controlled by its users.
Traditional media had to learn from the Internet experience where "people's
journalism" was becoming popular. As one speaker noted: "We don't control our
users, they'll go where they want, when they want, and it's now our job to take them
there."
Far from always being big, bad thought controllers, portal sites can even be helpful.
Lately I have been experimenting with Excite Australia's version which allows a great deal
of user customisation. At the click of the mouse I can read my horoscope, check the
weather forecasts in nominated cities, display the top five news stories in four different
categories, view my evening TV program guide, and have constantly updated displays of
selected share prices.
That's great, but a whiff of paranoia persists. Is Excite trying to make me happy so I
will be easier to control?
If it is, the remedy is simple -- build my own home page with
basic HTML. Then I can foist it on others and control what they see . . .
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