March 25 2001.

The end of the Apple iReview directory

Apple has silently closed down iReview, a website review and rating site presenting more than 1000 selected quality sites on a wide array of topics.

iReview was part of the Apple iTools collection of tools for Macintosh users, which also includes electronic greeting cards and online disk storage.

The idea of presenting a selected handfull of sites to help searcher find valuable information on the Net is not a bad one. Such sites often contains links to other relevant sites, and may therefore function as gateways to clusters of quality sites covering a specific topic.

It seems, however, that searchers in general did not find it obvious that they should go to Apple to find such a catalogue, nor did the Macintosh users.

One could say that the demise of iReview is another example of the problem of building "horizontal" (general) portals. Visitors are not looking for sites that can tell them anything about everything. They are looking for a specific piece of information or a particular tool, and they want it fast.

Apple has given up the idea of becoming a general content provider, and is now sticking to what it knows best: computer hardware and software.

Apple iTools

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