Remember vortals from the dotcom hey days? For those who dont recognize the term, it stood for vertical portals – go after a particular target group, and provide range of services to them – our first business before we gravitated to jobsahead was a “vortal” called zipahead for Indian youth!
Well, the vortal is back. I was at the alwayson media conference in new york yesterday, and a lot of companies seem to be building destination sites for particular target groups. It begs an interesting question of what has changed, and will the outcomes be any different this time around. Three things that have changed massively in favor are:
- Critical mass of users on fairly targeted groups
- Growth of online advertising to support such models
- Maturity of community capabilities on the web
What has not changed though, is the difficulty of creating truly great content at one place, when the user has a choice to get best of breed content at different locations. In my view, that remains the single biggest challenge for such sites. So a college goer may use different sites for his academics need, versus dating, versus sports, and so on. The new model of aggregation of web content adds another dimension to these sites – they now have an opportunity to aggregate best of breed content, as well as syndicate out to wherever the user is (a la facebook). In some sense, the battle for the vortal is really a battle for the homepage.
Any thoughts on how you see this evolving?
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What has changed majorly, as Alok mentioned, is the increased ability to reach out to the user (and user generated content) by using existing social networks and also the users ability to reach out to vortals using improved search engines.
And though this would be helpful to vortals reaching out to very specific audience (engineering students, biking fans, pregnant women etc), it creates a further challenge for vortals reaching out to more generic audience like the ‘Indian Youth’ (due to increased visibility of very focused vortals).
Ad rate worries, to some extent can be put to rest by creation / syndication of truly compelling content that drives focus groups. Larger user base will certainly yield pricing power as you go. Niche portals can’t hope to survive any other way. Exits thro acquisitions by Yahoo were once an option for many small players. But even that window will soon be sealed if the proposed $44.1 b merger of MSFT-YHOO goes through.
But the merger could be a boon for attention-shy niche Vortals harboring secretive dreams to grow large, as the `shock and awe’ dust raked by the deal will take time to settle. They can reasonably expect MSFT and YHOO laboring with messy integration issues and Google warding off the perceived threat from the combine.
So, get back to work….
We’re in this space with http://www.moneyoga.com – currently just a “v” part of the vortal (user registration and all the jazz still pending). We’re targeting Indian Stock Market Investors.
In our space we are more exposed to spam than most vortals because the business of making money on stocks has a very lucrative link with the well established business of telling people how to make money on stocks. We therefore want to regulate user-generated-content, and not by moderating spam, but by allowing “actions” rather than words. Still, text is important and is source of all things Google, so we have to figure out a way around spam.
We are working on aggregation. The model involves locating quality content, working with authors or sites, and bringing it all together. While some content – prices, balance sheets, announcements – are simple, it’s bringing together user blogs, google/yahoo groups etc. together that’s confounding us.
Widgets and cross-content-syndication is also key – so bringing our stuff on to facebook or orkut is part of the game. We don’t care to be the homepage here, but want to be accessible. Still, the volumes here are suspect, even for what is the highest online commerce generating community in the country. (Largely because they don’t necessarily get hooked to the facebook type of sites, or write their own blogs)
While the space is evolving, I think it will take way too much time for pure online growth to kick in. What we’re discovering is that with access speeds of the average user not quite being broadband, offline ways to get to them with the same content may actually be more beneficial, alongside the online matter. Printed newsletters to supplement email. SMS alerts or summaries. And so on.
The language challenge is not just translation but how can we make it effective. (I may speak Hindi or Hinglish but I would rather see english numbers and hindi text and english words for stuff like “futures”)
I don’t know whether companies that build “platforms” for multiple vertical sites are going to be quite as effective – the advantage of that versus say, Ning, Myspace, Orkut or even google groups is not compelling enough, IMHO. Every vertical type of site needs specific features. Plus, the business model isn’t hinged on features.
If vertical sites can’t charge a significant premium on ad-rates, they’re dead. And as much or more than online ads, offline ads and subscriptions can be a significant source of income (where the horizontals won’t compete).
Interesting points – couple of things that I dont necessarily agree with. First, lower ad rates is not a strength – its a weakness – all this tells us is that niche sites have limited pricing power. Secondly, I am not convinced that a single site can offer hundreds of vertical communities – I dont see how that can offer enough depth in all areas, especially as engaged communities become the driver of such sites.
We are a group of ex IITians and working on a great idea for vortal. We need help in setting up our business and hiring talent. Can you please suggest cost effective way we can setup ourselves as a business and find local developers in Gurgaon.