The secret sauce of Yahoo’s front page is more clicky than sticky: the slide show of news that runs at the top is not very deep, but it is difficult to resist. Editors have real-time analytics on click-through rate and can adjust the presentation on the fly; underperformers are quickly dumped or reconfigured. Yahoo uses a combination of technological and human curators to feed a robust audience. (Lest you think that’s easy, compare the home page to that of AOL, another legacy portal. Yahoo smashes AOL flat.) - Ben Casnocha