Getting "me" on-line

By Michelle Johnson, Globe Correspondent

"Personalize this page!" "Your News!" "Your Sports!" "Your World!" Chances are, if you've hit your favorite Web search engine lately, you've noticed a button or link inviting you to "personalize" your visits to the site. Personal? The Internet? Well, yes, sort of.

Want a Web page that gives you Your stock quotes, Your sports, Your news, Your weather, Your horoscope, and even Your name preceded by a cheery, "Welcome?" Done. Just call up what used to be called a search engine. It's now called a portal, and it's aiming to turn your Web experience into I, Me, Mine online.

If you're still thinking of the Internet as a giant haystack hiding whichever needle you're looking for at the moment, log on again. Customized "start pages" such as My Yahoo, My Excite and My News (America Online) will automatically deliver a wide range of news and information to your Web browser without you having to search for a single thing.

While these "personalized" sites differ in look and feel, and in the scope of the content they offer, they serve up a similar mix of news, sports, weather, and entertainment, as well as ways to search the Web. And they share the goal of filtering a vast amount of information so that you get just what you're interested in.

To do that, they've got to get personal -- with you. That means you'll have to surrender some information, such as your name, possibly your address, and certainly your zip code. They may want to know your gender, your household income, and your e-mail address, too.

Are people reluctant to give up that kind of information? Not necessarily. Especially if they think they're going to get some goodies in exchange.

"People are willing to give up information for value," says James McQuivey, an analyst for Cambridge-based Forrester Communications. They'll fill out a form to allow a site such as My TicketMaster to alert them when their favorite band is touring, or for an online store to keep track of their preferences in, say, golfing equipment, McQuivey says.

Not all sites need to ask for personal information in order to personalize your visit, however.

"More innovative is when you go to a site and it looks different," based on your previous visits, McQuivey says. "They do that by sending a file called a cookie to your hard drive." These cookies, which can send information about your habits back to the site, allow the site to alter what it shows you based on what you've seen or done in past visits.

Chief among sites tracking visitor's habits are the online retailers such as Amazon.

com, Barnesandnoble.com, Cdnow.com, and Reel.com. These sites greet visitors who've purchased merchandise by name, and they can make recommendations based on past purchases. Visitors are also encouraged to subscribe to e-mail newsletters on topics they're interested in, or to sign up for alerts that will let them know when a product is in stock.

Scads of online stores are betting that you'll be so enamored of this personalized attention -- one-on-one marketing -- that you'll shop till you drop. A recent report by Jupiter Communications of New York notes that 40 percent of the top 25 online merchants are offering personalized features, and 93 percent plan to in the next year.

The search-engines-turned-portals aren't the only Web sites offering personalized news, information and entertainment. PlanetDirect, a personalized Web service based in Andover, bills itself as "Where You Live Online."

The company doesn't produce the content that visitors select for their personalized portal page. They repackage offerings from some 150 content partners that they've deemed the best. Add to that features such as the ability to read your e-mail from multiple accounts, or an e-mail reminder service that will alert you to birthdays and anniversaries, or your own online address book to help you keep up with cyberbuddies, and you've got a service designed to get you to put your feet up for awhile.

"We don't really call it personalization, so much as relevancy," says Terri Henry-Ford, PlanetDirect's director of marketing communications. Henry-Ford describes PlanetDirect's experience as "horizontal," meaning that, when you click a link, what comes up is tailored to the preferences you've indicated and what the system has observed you looking at.

If you're looking for, say, food and drink in Boston, "You don't have to go into `Boston' and then search around for something on `food and drink.' When you click on `food and drink' the page is customized for information in your area," says Henry-Ford.

Like PlanetDirect, Burlington-based NewsEdge Corp. does not directly produce content for its NewsPage customized news services. But it takes the culling a step further with a cadre of human editors who organize their offerings into 1,200 topics. Primarily aimed at business users, the site also has a following among those who work at home or run small companies.

"Our users select some number of topics that they'd like to receive," says David Scott, marketing director for NewsEdge, "and they're assured that of the 50,000 news stories that come out on a daily basis, they get the 10 or 20 stories that most matter for that particular topic."

NewsPage has more than 800,000 registered users.

The service strikes at two problems Web surfers face daily. "There's information overload, and a twin problem of information `overlook,' " says Scott "You miss something that you might need, something that you might want, or that you might not even know existed."

NewsPage offers a basic package of business news, a smidgen of entertainment and sports, and stock and company information for free. For $3 a month, it will send you a daily e-mail news summary, and for $3.95 you'll be able to access articles from "premium" partners. "Quite a large percentage," of users of the free site migrate to the fee-based products, says Scott.

That brings us to the point that these personalized sites are not just giving you free news and horoscopes out of the goodness of their hearts.

They're trying to build brand loyalty, and get you to return to their site on a regular basis. That traffic means more opportunities to sell you their goods and services, and to shove some targeted advertising your way.

Free sites carry banner ads, which pay the bills. Advertisers hope that by sitting atop a Web page that you look at every day, you'll eventually check out their goods and services. And with personalized sites tracking your buying habits, your movements around the Web, and your household income, they know what you want, and where to sell it to you.

Blackvoices.com, which carries news, entertainment, and information directed at African Americans, attracts advertisers who want to reach that audience. And like many other sites, Black Voices is moving toward personalized services. "We'll be adding a customized news page, personalized e-mail and homepages," says Barry Cooper, founder and general manager of Black Voices.

Even America Online, a subscription-based service, has set up a freebie on the Web. My News can be used by AOL subscribers, as well as, non-subscribers. It's drawing "several hundred thousand page views a day," according to David Gang, senior vice president of strategic development for America Online.

"My News has been pretty popular. It probably helped that it kicked off in the middle of the Starr Report," says Gang.

So what if you toss those disks that AOL drops into your snail mailbox? They can ply you with offers at AOL.com.

But you've got to admit, for the price of putting up with blaring banner ads, or the time it takes to type in your zip code, you can pick up some pretty cool things at these free, build-your-own Web sites. And if you're willing to pay a small fee, the options get even slicker.

How about a vanity e-mail address? For just $20 for six months, Eddress.com will let you be joe(AT SIGN SYMBOL)Patriots.MegaFan.com or jane(AT SIGN SYMBOL)TheGoddess.com, or just plain bill(AT SIGN SYMBOL)Fun.Lover.net.

My News - AOL

www.aol.com/mynews

Cost: Free. Open to AOL subscribers and non-subscribers.

Customizable content: National, international, business, sports, and entertainment news; stock quotes; weather.

Pros: Clean, attractive look and feel; speedy setup, easy to change; wide range of content; video and audio spice things up.

Cons: One small quibble -- with the exception of the distinctive weather page, sections have a similar look, which forces the user to look twice to confirm which section he or she's in.

My Yahoo

my.yahoo.com

Cost: Free

Customizable content: National, international, business, and

entertainment news; stock quotes; sports scores; maps and driving directions; track packages; change layout of pages; weather; local movie times; Newsclipper; free e-mail accounts.

Pros: Breadth of content is excellent; well organized help pages.

Cons: Uninspired look and feel; less experienced users may be overwhelmed by extensive number of options to choose from.

My Excite

my.excite.com

Cost: Free

Services: In addition to the usual news, weather and sports, and stock quotes, users can select features such as a notepad, cartoons, the local lottery, TV listings, and a city of the day.

Pros: In the nice touch department, users can customize the welcome message that appears at the top of their page. Example: Instead of "Welcome, Jane" a visitor could be greeting with "What's Up, Janie!"

Cons: Modest content offerings; long, boring help page; making changes is cumbersome; kitchen sink layout of front page crams too much content in, although the look can be simplified by clicking a Hide It link. Ugh.

Personal Guide -- Lycos

personal.lycos.com

Cost: Free

Customizable content: News, sports scores, weather, stock quotes, free create-your-own home page, free e-mail account.

Pros: Users can drag and drop boxes to change the way the page displays information if they have newer Web browsers.

Cons: Even though it's fairly easy to change the color of the screen and various page headings, pages have a crowded, ho hum look and feel.

My Netscape

my.netscape.com

Cost: Free

Customizable content: "Channels" include search engines, news, weather, sports, horoscopes; free e-mail.

Pros: If you use the Netscape browser and never bothered to change your start-up page, you don't have to travel far to sign up.

Cons: Instead of asking for information such as my hometown up front, the set up page dumped me into a generic page with weather for cities I wasn't interested in, and gave the wrong horoscope. Too much refining was required to get the page I wanted. Other sites do this better.

Microsoft

home.microsoft.com

Cost: Free

Customizable content: Lots of Microsoft-branded offerings including MSNBC and MSBET; stock quotes; local weather (pick Fahrenheit or Celsius) and news, sports scores; business, entertainment, and health news; choice of search engines; free e-mail.

Pros: Clean, easy to follow page; video; broad range of content.

Cons: Clean, easy to follow page is bland. Not a look you'd necessarily want for a start page that you have to stare at every day.

www.newspage.com

Cost: Basic service, free. Direct: $2/month, Premium: $3.95/month.

Customizable content: Company news, general news, stock quotes; delivery via Web site and e-mail.

Pros: Column in left pane shows number of articles in the user-selected categories; wide range of content; colorful interface.

Cons: Fees for "premium" content that's available for free on other sites if you're willing to do some digging.

PlanetDirect

www.planetdirect.com

Cost: Free

Customizable Content: news, weather, sportsfavorite links, stock ticker, sports ticker; e-mail reminder service; favorite search engine.

Pros: Comprehensive, visually interesting; quirky links such as the "Mystery Click," and "Joke of the Day."

Cons: Novice users may be overwhelmed by volume of offerings.

www.Eddress.com/index.html

Cost: $20 for 6-months/$35 per year

Customizable content: Vanity e-mail addresses. Pick one that's tailor made for your profession, your passions, your hobbies. Examples: bill(AT SIGN SYMBOL)NiceTeeth.com, or How it works: Mail to your "vanity" address is forwarded to your "real," e-mail address. Example: If Susan's real e-mail address is susan(AT SIGN SYMBOL)aol.com, friends can e-mail her at her vanity address, susan(AT SIGN SYMBOL)RedSoxMegaFan.com, and the mail will be forwarded to her susan(AT SIGN SYMBOL)aol.com mailbox.

PathfinderMail -- Time Warner

www.pathfindermail.com

Costs: Free or $14.95/year for specialty names.

Customizable content: Choose a free e-mail address that ends in pathfindermail.com, or pay the $14.95 for custom choices such as com, doris(AT SIGN SYMBOL)2-cool.com, or carol(AT SIGN SYMBOL)youngerandwiser.com.

How it works: Have mail from your cool custom address forwarded to your "real" address, or read your mail on the PathfinderMail Web site.