What the heck is a blog portal?

Posted on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 by Rex Hammock

What the heck is a blog portal? These folks want to sell magazines blog portals. A what? That was my first head-scratching question, also: Apparently, here’s the concept (direct quotes): If you have a magazine, you want to set up “a stand alone blogging community portal to compliment your existing online magazine. You want to let your readers talk amongst themselves, automatically growing new advertising real estate…”

Can there be a more oxymoronic phrase than blog portal? Blogs are about personal expression and individuality. Portals are about, well, trying to jam together and own everything and everyone you can. Besides, offering someone help to create a portal sounds about as anachronistic as offering someone help to create a steel mill.

I’m going to stop there. I’m trying to stay positive. I’m trying to be a portal of positivity.

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About Rex Hammock

Founder/ceo of Hammock Inc., the content marketing and custom media services company based in Nashville, Tenn.
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  • Blair Stilwell

    I just had a flashback to 1998. They only forgot the “e” or “i” at the beginning of the name.

  • bhudgins

    Maybe a blog portal is all about joining the converdestination

  • Paul Conley

    Jeez. When I drill down a bit in Oxycon’s site it becomes clear that the product is aimed at magazine executives that haven’t spent 3 minutes trying to understand blogging, new media, online community, etc.
    Part of their marketing material says “see why you need to launch your Magazine’s own MySpace.”
    MySpace! The community that grew at unheard of speed by FREEING users to CREATE! The community that has prospered by being what its users want it to be, while resisting the urge to try and force its users to be what the company wants them to be.
    Oxycon wants to duplicate that success by operating a system with:
    “Editorial review of what is being posted”
    “Registration controls, to gather and collect valuable demographic information ‘at the beginning” and the ability to “Control the topical or discussion categories within the blog.”
    So what sort of knucklehead would buy into this? I guess that would be the “anonymous” people who posted comments of praise here:
    http://209.196.51.163/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=349DF6BB879446A1886B65F332AC487F&nm=Blog&type=Blog&mod=View+Topic&mid=35F92B5EB9F04AD886051400A7B8778C&tier=7&id=745175F530CA4D5EBE4B216EF449172B
    If someone wants to try and understand why MySpace works, they should check out the work of Danah Boyd:
    http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
    Everyone else can register at Oxycon.