Portal of the Network

1.4.1 Portal of the Network

As the wikipedia defines, “So-called portal websites are applications systems that lead to some comprehensive Internet information sources and provide relevant information services”. At the beginning, the portal websites offered search engine and the network access service. Later, due to the increasingly fierce competition in the market, the portal websites had no choice but to expand a variety of new

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services in the hope that Internet users would be attracted and maintained by the business of different kinds, which causes a wide variety of services to come up in different portal websites currently, making the network a “department store” or “network supermarket”. Recently, the portal websites mainly provide such services as news, search engine, online access, chat room, e-board, free mailbox, movies and music information, e-commerce, online community, online game, free space in website, etc. Among the typical examples are www.sina.com, www.163.com, www.sohu.com, etc in China.

The portal websites evolves as is shown in Fig. 1.10.

Figure 1.10 The progress curve of portal websites This figure shows that it is the phase from 1997 to 1999 when the concept of

portal website is introduced and people’s habit of accessing it is developed. On February 25, 1998, Sohu, the first large classification search engine in China, came to the front. It is then that stone rich sight declared to merge and acquisite “huayuan zixun”, the largest overseas Chinese website company, and set up www.sina.com, the largest Chinese website around the world.

On July 12, 1999, www.china.com was listed in for the first time, earning USD 86,000,000. In January, 2000 it was listed in the market by releasing new shares, making an amazing amount of USD 300 million. The fact www.china.com was warmly welcomed at NASDAQ mainly depended on then-popular concepts such as “China” and “Internet”. In November 1999, China and the US reached the agreement on access to WTO, the share price of www.china.com increased by 75% within only one day. In March 2000 when the aggregative index number of NASDAQ popped to 5000 points, the share price of china.com was also pushed high to USD 300 per share, and the market value of china.com Company was as high as more than USD 5 billions, equal to the then-market-value of Ericsson, the communication manufacture tycoon. On April 13, 2000, the sina.com company

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declared its IPO, which makes the first real net share from China Mainland entering NASDAQ. On July 5, 2000, the 163.com company declared its IPO, and landed on NASDAQ. On July 12, 2000, sohu.com was listed on NASDAQ. By then, the portal websites entered the stage of “the exaggerated future value.”

As the bubble of Internet broke, the share of sina.com once dropped down to USD 1.06 in October 2001, the share of sohu.com down to USD 0.60 in April 2001, the American depository receipt of www.163.com down to USD 0.53 in July 2001. Due to the mistakes in the financial reports, the NASDAQ stock market notified the trade of www.163.com was in temporary suspension from 8:52 A.M. on September 4, 2001 East Time (8:52 P.M. on September 4, 2001, Beijing Time). The portal websites enter “the low valley that melt into nothingness”.

In July 2002, three largest portal websites in China released the financial reports of the second quarter of the year, and declared in different ways that Chinese website company had already moved from the money-burning era to the profitable phase. These largest websites found out the secret of success— short message service.

In 2003, the number of netizens in China made a record of 68,000,000. Three portal websites made outstanding accomplishment with an increase in their shares. The trash share worth of no less than USD 1 increased to USD 70 per share in 2003. The pattern that profits are made mainly through short message service, network games and network advertisements has become clear. In 2003, portal websites entered a phase of stable development.

The consumers’ demand boosts the development of Internet. At the very beginning, it is the fact more information needs to be gathered that leads to the portal websites coming up. When users need to find out accurate information among the huge sundry information, the search engine accordingly came up. Soon later when users need to socialize with others, IM, the instant telecommunication device, become popular.

One-stop unified service, all kinds of advertisement, and homogeneous news reflect the current picture of Chinese portal websites. The websites and users are interactive, one is for recreation and the other for profits.

As the demand level theory proposed by Maslow defines, people have five needs: psychological needs, security needs, social needs, self-respect needs and needs of self-fulfillment, as is ordered from low to high by the intensity of needs. Users’ needs of self-respect and self-fulfillment has not been fully exploited so far. There is neither geographically accessible (in terms of the end serving device) nor psychologically accessible (whether or not the websites are doing well has nothing to do with users) between websites and users. Accordingly, the portal websites will develop in the direction of personalized network portal from the unified network portal in the future.

By using the Web 2.0 technology, Google has already released personal portal. Users can subscribe to NYT or BBC news, weather forecast, finance and economic

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information, etc. as long as they have a password and login in it. The combination of IM, blog and RSS is also a wonderful creation, because possibly in the near future, netizens will have their needs satisfied only by starting IM. It is when a real era of personal network portals comes.