What's with web portals these days? Every large corporation seems to want one. Do they really believe there's big money to be made in the portal business? Or is it just an easy solution to sell to your CEOs when they ask for a web presence?

"Jim, I want the IT Department to create an Internet presence for us."

"Okay boss. Hey, how about a portal?"

"Portal? Why, that sounds like a lovely idea! We'll make millions! Boy, I'm glad no one else thought of this idea."

Everything's a portal now. And essentially, anything CAN be a portal now. Any ole' web site with links to other content areas can easily be billed as a portal to the web.

So why such a growth in the number of web portals lately?

I think it's because "portal" has become a buzz word in the Internet industry. Every CEO out there is hearing about this new buzz word and just absolutely has to get one too.

"Quick, Jim, we have to jump on the portal bandwagon! We've got to make our portal better than everyone else's. It has to be special, unique."

"Sure boss. What do you have in mind?"

"Hmmm… I know! Why don't we make it look just like Yahoo?"

The ability to use colored background table cells was a blessing to the portal business. No self-respecting portal out there can go without a few colored tables now.

With this proliferation of portals growing out there, you'd imagine that they must be making some kind of money, right? Why else would they all jump on this?

Sadly, that's not true. Sad for them, at least.

They're all jumping on it for the sake of jumping on something.

One of the best kept secrets in the business world is to tell a corporation that they must do something because, "everyone else is doing it." That's one of the best ways to motivate a corporation.

Because none of them want to be left behind. It's a pervasive culture of paranoia out there. And that's what has spawned all these useless portals.

Not money. Not originality. Not innovation. But fear. Plain and simple. And that's really sad.

. . .

What's with web portals these days?