With redesigns, CNN, USA Today, and AOL News hope to catch Web 2.0 wave

Relaunched on July 1, CNN.com takes advantage of Flash media, through which videos may be loaded quickly in relatively high quality.  Unsurprisingly, the focus on video seeks to tie the website back to the television network, but as one commenter pointed out, the site may have fallen into a “video trap” by featuring irrelevant videos for the sake of video.   In addition, the front page has a “Most Popular” box based on user input and a “We Recommend” feature that suggests stories based on browsing history.

USA Today’s site, which relaunched its site in March, is now image heavy with large text for drawing readers’ eyes to lead stories.  Its strong points, according to Catone, are the commenting and voting features.  The majority of stories receive hundreds of comments, and users take advantage of the “Recommend” button to vote for their favorites.  Embracing social news, USA Today allows readers to tag stories (categorize stories under the same term) with Digg, del.icio.us, Newsvine, Reddit, and Facebook. Social users can make their own blogs and profiles, send messages, and find friends on the new site.

AOL News redesigned its site at the end of June and took a cue from blog organization, with the top six stories featured in a center column on the main page.  The page now supports user comments, but few users have taken advantage of this system yet.  Like USA Today, users can tag stories, and a tag cloud (a visual representation of the most categorized stories) links popular topics to blogs through Sphere. Despite all the blog-like options, Catone remarked that, “AOL’s embrace of blog culture seems to only go skin deep,” citing inconsistencies and disjointed user options.

With CNN and AOL News having only recently relaunched their sites, it has yet to be seen if the video, social media, or blog approach will best attract the Web 2.0 users.  In the end, Catone praised CNN for the most professional-looking and attractive layout but identified USA Today as the undisputed winner for social media.

Interestingly enough, a commenter later linked to statistics showing a decline in USA Today page views since the site redesign.

Source: Read/WriteWeb