Portals are really all about email; messaging; stock quotes; and – of course - search. Yahoo mail; AOL mail; Hotmail are the big drivers of clicks. It amazes me that the portals don’t double down on communications and make mail, messaging and the address book better; cleaner; faster; and spam free! What could possibly be more important?

News, music and movies sneak in a bit as content sites and some other functionality for video and audio playing. But specialists are winning here: Hulu, YouTube, ESPN, CNN, Google News, etc. etc. It is hard for a portal to win in specialist areas.

But email and communications messaging is and will always be the driver of audience and traffic as it is a daily ongoing habit. It is really odd that social networking didn’t fall off of the back of mail or messaging and that it is a stand alone application a la Facebook or MySpace. That game is over for the portals and the social networks can’t seem to get traction in launching mail or messaging apps either. I don’t like my Facebook mail at all.

I have had my email address on AOL since 1992. I have had an AIM name space since its launch. I started on Facebook 18 month ago. I am on Twitter too.

That will be it for me. I am connected as much as I want to be now.

Focus on communications. You can’t go wrong portals. You can’t win being unbranded or new banded content site aggregators. Communications is your bread and butter. Focus on what is important or lose scale.