September 25, 2000

10:55 AM

NBCirelaunches as probably the most boring, blase portal site I've ever seen and their stock goes up? Is it just me, or does it look like they bought the site from "Al's Do It Yourself Portals"?
posted by owillis (7 comments total)

I agree, even funnier though are the comments from the CEO in an article in today's SF Chronicle:
"According to Lansing, NBC Internet is abandoning the goal of being a portal for the masses and will instead focus on 18-to-54 year olds..."
posted by brian at 11:41 AM on September 25, 2000

I caught an NBCi commercial while taking in a bit of olympic action. It was profoundly irritating. All about how NBCi can provide a life enriching internet experience.

I had to run to the bathroom before I tossed my cookies all over the carpet.
posted by aladfar at 12:21 PM on September 25, 2000

life-enriching internet? not from that portal.

all i got was worse-than-the-usual search frustration, special offers in exchange for my demographic info, and horrific IA.

the whole site smells like fear. release the dogs!
posted by patricking at 1:33 PM on September 25, 2000

Well, it actually makes sense for the site formerly known as XOOM.Com (and snap.com).

NBC is going to pour money into it, investors will be elated. Hopefully they'll continue to offer their members cool stuff at discounts...

...just wish they'd lay off the daily spam, huh?
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 2:16 PM on September 25, 2000

short words....

1-going to add it to my FuckedCompany.com portfolio...

2-MSN, MSNBC, NBCi....the trail from where the design came from is easy to follow.

3-if 18-54 year-olds aren't the masses, who in the hell is?
posted by th3ph17 at 4:02 PM on September 25, 2000

The search engine part of NBCi is worthless. I've been trying to have the listing for my site corrected for 3 years. Both of the previous locations (both dead) are listed, as separate entries yet, and I can't get the entries corrected or my 3rd location entered as a separate entry too.

Oddly enough, I didn't originally submit my site to the Snap directory in the first place.
posted by Electric Elf at 6:50 PM on September 25, 2000

I'm with th3ph17 -- 18 to 54 pretty much constitutes the masses. The people outside in that age demographic don't use the web much at all (the very young and the very old).

My biggest complaints with NBCi is that they canned a sexology site I was involved in a good two to three weeks ahead of announcing the NBC/snap/xoom merger. The site itself wasn't porn or anything, just a "if you need this resource, here's how to find it" service.

I'm afraid that every major merger among dot.coms conducts, as a byproduct, a commercial "progrom" of sorts. Anything that so much as hints at sex gets purged. A lot of the adult-oriented list managers over at egroups have been circulating "be prepared" memos. They fully expect that when as Yahoo! cleans house, they'll be among the dust bunnies to get vaccummed into oblivion.

There's little room for the fringe when mass marketing looks at the masses.

posted by debrahyde at 5:12 AM on September 26, 2000