A couple of weeks ago OJR reported that Yahoo
News – “the second most trafficked News & Information site on the Web” – was in
the process of a re-design. That design has now gone live in beta form, with the tagline “More News.
More Relevant. More About You.”
From a design pov:
– They’ve toned down the blue colour of the links.
– News sources are now highlighted more – AP will be pleased, as they’re gung-ho on
branding their content.
– Tabs are now used for the section menu, enabling them to go from 3 columns to 2 and so
free up white space.
design live on http://news.yahoo.com].
The things I like the best though are the increased focus on RSS and search,
and the integration with My Yahoo. From the intro
page:
“Yahoo! News now offers My Sources so you can select all the news sources you want
from around the Web. Choose from a range of providers that offer RSS (Really Simple
Syndication) format, just like you do on My Yahoo!. To make it really simple, any source
you added to your My Yahoo! page will automatically be added to your Yahoo! News home
page.”
emphasis mine
Not only does the new design allow users to subscribe to non-traditional news sources,
but the “dive deeper into topics” buttons are a fantastic example of topic search n’ subscribe
applied to a major media website. Congrats to the Yahoo News team! I know that I have
some Yahoo staff subscribed to my blog, so perhaps my RSS and Topic-based Search
evangelism is paying off in some small way 🙂
p.s. Google, please sit up and take notice – instead of spending your time rejecting
fantastic news
sources.
