MSN: ‘The Portal’s Not Dead’

REDWOOD CITY, CALIF. — Portals are so twentieth century. Or are they?

Joanne Bradford, chief media officer for Microsoft’s MSN site, is brushing aside any criticism that online portals have seen their best days. Speaking at VentureWire’s Consumer Technology Innovations conference here today, she said the portal concept, and MSN in particular, are alive, well and getting plenty of Microsoft’s investment money.

Asked if portals were “dying a slow death,” Bradford said quite the opposite. “Everything is looking more like a portal these days if you look at Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. I think there’s a reverse portal phenomenon going on where you stuff the tail back in the head and make it mean something.”

In other words, while a lot of social networking sites carry more personalized, user-generated and long tail content (referring to the theory of niche sites creating their own markets), they’re all trying to organize content like a portal does.

Full story: internetnews.com