Way back in 1999 when I was working as a Web Traffic Analyst I remember the mantra coming from the big internet portals (Yahoo, Excite, MSN, AOL and Alta Vista),they were all saying “Make us your home page!” Then came the personalized experience, you could give the page a theme, move around some information, and see your favorite headlines all in one place. The idea was that people could find the information they wanted quickly. That was when we heard “Make your personalized page your home page.” Then came Google, and the concept of an information cloud. Suddenly, the “portal” seemed dead, personalized homepages languished, and without asking too much people began setting their home page to this new, simple search box that pulled anything they wanted out of a cloud.

For years it seemed like the personal home page was dead in the water, and then came iGoogle, a MyYahoo re-launch, Live.com, and a surprisingly familiar mantra “Customize this page and make it your home page.” I had to ask myself, haven’t we been here already? The answer, to my surprise is yes… and no….

Yes and no you ask?? How is that? Well, yes –we have had a personalized portal, but it was not until recently that we had the ability to publish our personalized pages to communities, follow the activity of our friends, and watch twitter feeds all day long. Something changed in recent years. In a world of Facebook and MySpace where people follow friend activity, share music and videos, rate headlines, and create media online, all of a sudden we are no longer simply pulling information out of a cloud. Instead we are actively participating in the creation, organization, and distribution of media– and the big guys are trying to position themselves to be the platform of choice for doing so. Hence, open application interfaces, the modularization of content and applications, and a renewed breath of life for the personalized home page as the place where this can all live.

As we become more and more involved with the internet the personalized home page is changing. It is becoming the place where we follow our twitter feeds, our friend updates, our YouTube videos, and even a place where we publish our content. We’re beginning to see it as a place where we go to store online files, manipulate and re-create media, and access online applications. It is no longer just a personalized view of the internet. It is not just about getting information, instead it is also about creating and interacting with information. It is a ground movement that has caused the personalized home page to evolve into something much more than it has ever been. The new personalized home page has changed. You can now follow your twitter feeds, you can see your buddy information, there are applications that you can interact with and all of this cool stuff is being organized in your personalized home page. In short, your personalized home page has changed, it is no longer just a home page. In short it has become more of an internet dashboard. It is a place where you can access your entire online life. You can pull information from the cloud, you can see your friends activity, you can publish, you can create, and you can organize your life.

Now, if we could just get some file storage, all creative suite apps and MS office applications integrated into the dashboard so that I can stop storing files on my hard drive, and stop spending thousands each year to update software. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google… which of you are going to do it first? The fighting bell has rung, let round two begin!