More portals announced today

The plan is to increase Microsoft's online presence fourfold, while providing local content in all regions. Judy Gibbons, Director of MSN Northern Europe says the portal approach has proved popular so far. "We believe portal sites are the way ahead for people to use the web, a fact that is demonstrated by the success of the MSN UK portal site. Usage has more than doubled over the last two months, and we are now seeing traffic of more 600'000 unique visitors every month and in excess of 20 million page views per month."

UK ISP, X-Stream is also adopting a portal strategy which launches today. X-Stream managing director Paul Myers says the new portal model provides customers "with everything from news to games" with the launch of X-Stream Central and The X-Stream Games Network.

ZDNet UK News provides daily news for X-Stream Central.