The title isn’t referring to the glut of weblogs, but something more specific. Perhaps it should have been:

Too many home pages, not enough sites

It certainly seems to me that Yahoo has had a page called “My Yahoo” for several years now, but since there are portal pages that you can now rearrange via the magic of AJAX, all of a sudden people can’t get enough. Or … is it that an RSS/AJAX “home page” is just really easy to make, so that’s what tens of startups are doing now in hopes of selling out. Sorry guys, but when Google, Yahoo, and MS already have their own RAHPs, your chances become Kate Moss thin. Yes, it takes more than just a registered dot com to be a startup this time around, but …

Convince me.

Convince me that I need a new home page. Why is firing my browser up to my inbox worse than opening a portal page that creates an extra click to get there? Why would I want to read all my RSS feeds on a web page instead of in Bloglines or a standalone browser? Why should I go through the time and effort of switching to your home page/desktop/portal when I’ve already gone through that?

Just so I can drag and drop the cute little modules? Is there a business case for drag and drop? I would think the business case is that people who are early-enough adopters to try out every new RAHP are the ones who really need it the least. People who have so few feeds that the can manage them via a portal page are already doing so in an environment which they find comfortable. They are the same people who are happy with that comfort zone and therefore are less likely to change lanes like Jay-Z. So unless you are hollering “Money Ain’t A Thang” it’s time to prepare a jack move.

Am I taking cheap shots at RAHPs? Perhaps… but let’s just consider this an ingredient in every slice of humble pie. Now, how about you dish me up a home page that will display what I want depending on the time of day? That right there is innovation in the form of increased productivity. All I need to do is click to home to know whether it’s time to check my email – whether I’ve got new email or not.

Was it Jay Allard who said: There is no homepage ?