A vortal is a vertical portal. Vortals now range from hobby and fan sites through to extremely commercial sites that concentrate on single subjects of varying scale. So users can be more confident of the relevance of anything within the vortal - and are likely to find new things of interest that they would not have found otherwise. Although the vortal is focused, a variety of content is typically offered. The objective of most vortal builders is to create an environment that will become the users' home page - the place from where they start their browsing, and the place they consistently return to.
Aggregation Pulling together content from disparate sources is a central vortal function.
The benefit to the user is that someone else is spending time identifying and packaging content and services that are most likely to be of interest to them. Examples include bulletin boards, voting booths, polls and chat. Although most vortals provide some form of content, many rely significantly on their user base to provide content in various forms - specialist expertise, advice, resource recommendations, reviews, discussion, feedback. User participation enhances their feeling of ownership and belonging - both importnat to create loyalty, return visits, and evangelism. They prefer to take total responsibility for what they find and look at.