What's happening? Well, fragmentation and further fragmentation and consolidation towards a select few portals by surfers. One suggestion that is being made is that the major portals will have to morph to become attractive to specialised audience niches: For instance, youth, entertainment, lifestyle etc.

But the portals will have to be careful: They stand to lose a chunk of their audiences should they make such a move; hence, they are reluctant. Nevertheless, they will be forced to because of the emergence of specialised portals and search engines, which are going to, over time, erode the large portals' franchise.

The pitch is being queered further by the emergence of new search engines such as google.com, alltheweb.com which are emerging as favourite hunting grounds for information because of their speed of search. They could well develop into contenders for the portal throne too as they gather traffic.The war of the portals is definitely not over; in fact it is entering its next phase.

What lessons can the Indian portals learn from this experience from the US? Well, the immaturity of the Indian internet market gives them some more space and time to manoeuvre around and experiment. But the leaders are not going to find things easy as the internet gains cachet. Sure rediff is spending oodles to gain popularity. As is indiainfo. As are several other portals. But a host of new specialised portals is at the starters' blocks right from the one this writer is developing to others on property, family, banking to youth to infotech. Not just in India but even from overseas Indians.

Then the other early birds such as Hinduonline, indiatimes, hindustantimes, indiatoday are also beginning to understand the internet game. They will aggressively gun for the same 2 million odd users on the Net in India and the 15 million or so Indians overseas. This only means that the big portals such as rediff stand to lose some of the eyeballs. The challenge therefore before them will therefore be to innovate to constantly retain visitors.

Elderly on the Net
ARE old people in India getting online? Nobody knows. And nobody probably has made the effort to find out. It's bad enough that we don't have enough youngsters riding the internet train. The problem is also that we don't have computers designed for those old-gnarled fingers and for thick-bespectacled eyes, though they can be designed.

This apart, the fear of the digital world amongst India's elderly is even more as they have not really been able to savour computers as much as in the US because computerisation is not all that well-spread here.

Nevertheless, in the US the number of old people getting online is growing. Surveys have highlighted this. A study by CommerceNet and Nielsens in the US showed that seven per cent of people between 55 and 64 went online to make a purchase as compared to just three per cent in 1997.

Another telephone survey has shown that 12 per cent of people 65 years old and over logged on to the WWW in April 1999 as against a piffling fiev per cent in 1997. Good growth by any yardstick. And it's likely to get better as more and more sites are coming up where they can purchase groceries, clothes and even medicines.

More elderly people are also logging on from public libraries where surfing is free. The Net can be a great place to stay in touch with family spread out all over the nation for the elderly.

Will some ISP take the initiative to target the elderly? Unlikely, but one is hoping that some one will. Special subscription packages can be designed and even a portal created. Being elderly does not mean they shuld be left out -- even of the Net.

(The writer can be connected at television@vsnl.com or television@hotmail.com)