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What's one of the fastest-growing Web phenomena right now?Portals, portals and more portals. We're not talking aboutmass-audience, consumer portals like Yahoo!, Excite, Snap andLycos, mind you. No, these new portals are unique combinations ofcompany intranets and extranets mixed with relevant data culledfrom the Web. They're 100 percent business-oriented and socustomized and narrowly focused that most Web surfers will neversee them--portals that only serve employees within a certaincompany, build relationships between suppliers and their customers,or provide fresh, informative gathering points for special-interestgroups and trading partners.
Like Yahoo! and that ilk, these so-called enterprise informationportals provide personalized launching points--the first Web pagesyou see after opening your browser--combining links to acompany's internal information with links to selected contenton the much more public Web. Within a company, for instance, eachemployee may set up his or her own portal page to provide dailyindustry news, links to competitors' Web sites, and a list ofthe latest sales reports and other important company documents--andmaybe, down in the corner of the page, a snapshot of his or herpersonal stock portfolio and the latest weather and sportsnews.
You can also create constantly updated portals aimed atcustomers. On them, you can highlight new products, special offers,news about your market, and even the status of specific orders.
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