I am really surprised that software developing companies haven't been building platforms and services making it easier for operators to add content to their portals. I still haven't seen any gaming portal having done a decent job when it comes to personalisation. Personalisation is one topic I will cover in my one-day workshop "Gaming Portals of the Future", http://www.use.se/future/
/Staffan

As previously working for a gaming software developing company I can say that I then did not understand the importance of the portal, we focused completely on the casino/poker/etc games and not the portal itself. Now, when working for an operator we see this as a huge asset and as a profound part of the player entertainment and that it is very important for conversions, making players play more etc. etc. So, software developing companies, build a very good platform tool, a great CMS with personalization, A/B testing, automatic choosing of most popular games for different markets, etc. etc.

Not that I'm trying to be overly self-promoting, but I think actually you would have found our demo both quite interesting and in line with the workshop outline you draft in this post. We've also got a whitepaper on online gaming communities available at our company website (http://bit.ly/cEDHFg)

We've got 10 years of experience doing casual multiplayer games, and at least a couple of years of experience as a provider of online communities. It's our experience that the coupling of these two aspects wield a very powerful tool for increasing brand loyalty and user retention.

A demo is available at https://certusgames.betware.com/CF/index.do, I'd be happy to create a test account for you if you'd like that?