A portal is a web-based platform that gathers data from various sources into a single user interface and presents users with the most important data for their specific circumstance. The term portal space is used to mean the total number of main sites contending to be one of the portals. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET and Microsoft Network.
Common services offered by portal sites include a directory of websites, a resource to search for other sites, news, weather data, email, stock statements, telephone and map information, and sometimes a community forum. Energize is among the first portals to offer users the capacity to make a site that is customized for individual interests. Organizations with portal sites have attracted in a lot of stock market investor interest because portals seen as ready to direction huge spectators and quantities of advertising viewers