Portals, what are their purposes?

[Acternaweb]

Looks like nearly every site worth looking at is calling itself a portal of some sort or another. My quest is what problem and/or issues does a portal solve? What benefit does it have over traditional sites? What challenges exist in implementing a portal structure/software?

Finally any recommended "players" for corporate portals?

Be interested to hear from everyone.

Thanks,

[heini]

A friend of mine works for a startup specialised on building portals, eh, sorry, vortals.
They do everything, from software, setup and design to content management. The company was founded end of 2001. It ceased to exist end of 2002.

Portals = yesterdays hype.

[Essex_boy]

Its funny this portal thing, I have several mates that started ecomm sites all failed.

Instead if saying they ran a failed ecom site its now a failed portal, strange thing is people seem to accpet that portals will collapse. Some how the stigma of failure goes fails to appear.