MyESPN Will Change the Game for Start Pages

ESPN recently and quietly unveiled MyESPN, an Ajax-based start page that's largely on par with Google.com/ig, Windows Live, Netvibes and a host of others. ESPN joins the Wall Street Journal and New York Times in rolling out flexible start pages for members.

I have been playing with MyESPN for a few days now and I really like it a lot. It matches most of the core features that the other start pages have. The one key exception is that it does not include a system that's open to developers. This limits its functionality because you can't use any of the gadgets that have been created for other start page platforms (unless they are simply RSS feeds).

Still, the vast majority of the browsing public could care less about gadgets and gizmos - at least right now. They do care about getting an efficient quick glance at the content they care about. MyESPN does just that.

People also like to personalize their experience too. MyESPN not only lets you add your own feeds, as the screen shot below shows, but you can customize the theme to match your favorite team's colors. In my case, I pimped out my page New York Jets style.

I see a start page battle shaping up in the months ahead between the mainstream news outlets and the search portals. The stakes are high. These are going to be the places where people increasingly initiate their browsing. This means that the start page will become a critical funnel for advertising.

The portals will use the developer community as their primary weapon in courting the hearts and minds of consumers. They will create the platform and let developers do their thing. At their heart, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Netvibes are tech companies. So this plays to their strengths.

The big media, however, will counter by stacking their pages with proprietary content you can't get anywhere else. In addition, they will throw in exclusive thematic elements that will add a special touch to your page to make them even more compelling.

MyESPN is a great example of how the big media can adopt new technologies to fight the start page war. It's the only start page that I know of where I can watch ESPN Motion right alongside my favorite RSS feeds on a page that I customized with my favorite team's colors. For sports fans, it's a draw. And that's why I think ESPN is changing the game for start pages.

What's also noteworthy is that ESPN is the only start page that I have seen to carry advertising. It's running ads from Yahoo Search Marketing in the footer of the page, as this screen grab shows.

What's next? A lot. I bet the TV nets next will launch their own start pages, packed with special content that's tied to their programming franchises, such as exclusive video or unseen episodes.

Keep an eye on this space. There's a big battle brewing and the race is still wide open.

Comments

[David]

Outside of ESPN Motion, which is a nice module, for sure, I don't see anything pulling me in. I'm a big sports fan, and I want to see it, but I don't yet.

It is a very clean start and there's potential, so I'm watching it, but there's just nothing else there for me yet.

[Greg Verdino]

Steve - This clearly plays into the trend toward personalization and ESPN is smart to start experimenting here. But my problem with the notion of a start page from ANY single content provider is that the user ultimately needs a personal start page for EVERY content provider. If my only interest were sports, MyESPN would be a great personal start - but what I want general news, entertainment content, blog feeds, UGC favorites, access to email and bookmarks, etc. And I want it all from a single personal start.

For me, personalization should be organized around the consumer (who increasingly wants content pushed to them) and not around the media company (who is most comfortable pulling consumers.) So give me widgets and feeds that I can throw into my Google IG and then follow directly to the content I want anyway, rather than proprietary walled garden destination (even if it is personalized to some extent.)

[Matt]

Nice review of the site.

I am having a really hard time getting excited about start pages. Haven't we been talking about start pages for ten years or so? Now we've just sprinkled in RSS to the equation.

Ultimately, I'm more interested in who is developing great content and making that available wherever and however people want it. Content aggregators -- not so interesting to me.

[max stryker]

MYESPN is excellent. It's personalization offerings are rich, varied and extremely useful. It will be a real game changer, in my opinion.

[Steve H.]

I think it's great to see a media producer like ESPN start to play in this space (with current Web 2.0/AJAX tech, that is).

I wonder if and when Netvibes/Microsoft/Google/Yahoo will start to just brand/package their existing start pages and build them for these media giants? Makes sense since as you point out they are the tech companies and it is right in their wheelhouse.

On the flip side, I would think it would behoove the media producers like ESPN or the TV networks to produce standard modules that can be consumed not only by their own new start pages, but by anyone else's as well (e.g. an ESPN Motion module in Netvibes). Or will we see the usual media producer tightfistedness and lack of vision?

[Dave]

I really like ESPN's offering, with the exception of all the advertising on the top (if you don't have adblock) and bottom, plus all that ugly blank space. If you get greasemonkey and platypus (extensions for firefox) you can remove those individual elements so it's perfect.