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.
