But it wasn't long before Pathfinder's buzz was drowned out by that of other sites, including many that offered specialized, niche services designed specifically for the Web. Wired magazine's Hotwired had hip tech news and views, ESPN's SportsZone offered game updates at unheard-of speeds, and a small site named after a South American river found success selling books at deep discounts. Sites like these built an allegiance among Web surfers largely because of the effectiveness of their focused approach. Their followings were similar to those that grow up around magazines - like the ones Time Warner was burying within Pathfinder. Pathfinder became the path less taken, and its owners finally decided to pave it over.
People can figure that out for themselves.
Yahoo, which used to be a straightforward and useful Web directory, is now a confusing mess of chat rooms, auction boards, news updates and other unnecessary services. The same is true at similar sites such as Lycos, Excite, Snap, MSN and Netscape's Netcenter. These sites are called portals because they're supposed to lead you somewhere else. Yet they seem designed to trap users in infinite loops of internal pages, all in hopes of boosting banner ad revenue enough to justify their bloated stock market valuations. I suppose new Net users might feel comfortable confining their clicks to a single, comprehensive site.