Content Aggregation Is Hot; Too Bad ICE Is Melting
By Ray Valdés
Despite ups and downs in the stock market prices of Internet companies, the Web continues its explosive growth. The most recent survey conducted by Netcraft tallied more than 13 million public sites, with more than 1 million coming online per month. If you thought you were overloaded with information, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Ironically, the response to this crush of sites has been to build even more sites, adding yet more information to the dogpile in the form of portals or destination sites that aggregate and filter content from other sites.
This, of course, is nothing new. Yahoo became a blue-chip Internet company early by providing high value to users who needed to get oriented, and wanted a launch point into the unfamiliar territory of cyberspace. Yahoo and other megaportals have recently been trying to keep users on their site by providing lots of site content. They do this through aggregation of news sources such as stock quotes, newswire, weather, and so on. Everyone is trying to emulate Yahoo's approach. Even sites with the most esoteric of topics (say, "FredsOilBurnerSupplies.com") now sport the trappings of a portal ("get the latest headlines on the oil burner industry," "chat with your peers on burning issues about used oil").
Demand has spawned several tools, technologies, and vendors for sites seeking to aggregate content and become portals. Products from companies like Plumtree, 2Bridge, Epicentric, Glyphica, Eprise, Autonomy, and so on are for enterprises seeking to build a company portal (both for staff and customers) that presents internally produced information as well as content from external sources.
