Stocks: (MSFT)(YHOO)(AAPL)(VZ)(TWX)
Website A VC argues that being in the portal business is a losing game. More and more traffic will go to niche sites. Who needs a big site to index everything?
CNN Money wants to differ. It says that the top 10 domains got 40% of all pageviews in 2006, up from 31% in 2001.
The answer to the question the debate frames is probably in having a look at the sites just below the top 10. Most are sites that have been around for a long time. Apple. Verizon. The Weather Channel. Target. CBS. These are not likely to grow faster than the web itself or take traffic from the portals like AOL and MSN.
The largest sites beyond the portals do have some properties that probably steal traffic from the tradtional web destinations. MySpace. YouTube. Photobucket. But, how many of these will emerge in any year and make it into the Top 50 sites. Not many. Perhaps none at all.
The enemy of the big portal is slowing internet traffic growth. As advertising impressions stop growing at a zillion percent year-over-year, the attraction of internet marketing as the "hot medium" starts to go away. Yahoo! has already learned that the hard way.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks