Now first of all I want to state upfront that I know this may be very old news to many people out there reading blogs like this one. After looking up some information I learned that these things have been around since 1996. However I don’t believe they really started taking off until 2005 and I haven’t really incorporated them into my online experience until this week.

1996? Wow. I thought in 1996 there was only AOL chat rooms and Instant Messenger. I guess I was more concerned with girls and beer back then.

Okay, so what am I talking about?

Personalized home pages.

For those out there who are NOT familiar with this concept, when I say personalized home pages I am referring to things like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes etc… These are all pages you can customize with content that YOU choose so that when you log onto the internet you are no longer exposed to whatever someone else deemed worthy. Instead, you are the master of your domain and control your experience which is what makes the web so great in the first place.

Your page can have a local weather section, a NY Times section, your local paper, local movie times, your favorite sports team can have its own place, all of the blogs you like to check out will be right there and updated etc.. I really can’t think of a reason not to have one of these things set as your homepage.

Obviously for websites and bloggers the goal is to get as many subscribers as possible to your content in order to indicate a large influence and impact. I can proudly say that Feedburner is currently indicating that this blog has a mighty 11 subscriptions.

Watch out Perez Hilton…or not.

This is just another example of the web empowering people to create their own experience much like the iPod enables people to basically program their own commercial free radio station. Unlike old media platforms like radio and TV, consumers are truly driving the market online which is another reason it is so exciting and great.

With radio, advertisers are determining everything you hear. If a song or personality is deemed offensive or inappropriate for a certain demographic the advertiser is trying to reach based on some outdated and mind-numbing research it is never going to get airtime. Have you ever been asked what you think of a personality or a song on the radio?

I haven’t.

When it comes to regular radio are you hearing whatever you want to hear whenever you want to hear it? Are the personalities you hear relatable and interesting to YOU? If not then radio programmers are falling short in the competition with the web.

It will always be like that whenever someone else is determining what you get.

Satellite Radio is becoming more and more popular because it is making money from subscribers for the most part so they don’t have to answer to advertisers in the way terrestrial radio does. Instead, they have to focus on creating more interesting content to entice people to pay for the service instead of relying solely on keeping advertisers happy.

Creating great content? What a concept!!!

On the web it has been like that for a while because you completely determine your environment. For a guy like me that comes from radio that is such an exciting idea. I believe that is what really fascinates me about this new media experience. The freedom of it all is insanely liberating.

Take advantage of it and set yourself up a personalized homepage today. I went with “My Yahoo” but of course you can choose whatever you want.

Here is a list of some of the top options that might help you get started.