The Huffington Post makes me sad
November 6, 2007
The Huffington Post covers an amalgamation of topics: Politics, Media, Business, Entertainment, Living Now. The front portal offers very large photos, today it was of Hillary and Bill along with Gisele at the Victoria Secret fasion show. Blogs posts, videos, photos and entertainment stories are featured prominently across the page. The font is big and there are hundreds of comments. There are options for “Quick Read” and “Sign Up For the Daily Brief.”
The layout of the Web site wasn’t too bad. The Web site incorporated a lot of things we’ve discussed as important for online news sites- interactivity, community, multimedia, and easy navigation.
But, truthfully, I felt like the site was dumbing things down. Maybe I’m just used to ready the snotty New York Times. But, I like to keep my trashy entertainment news separate from the important stuff, and I don’t need enormous font and even bigger photos to be interested. I don’t want the Quick Read, I want the real story. I’d love to see less pictures of the zillion bloggers and more links to what’s going on in the world.
On top of that, the Huffington Post’s blog section confused me. All the bright colors, all the random topics. The combination of many different authors, many different topics and vague blog titles left me feeling overwhelmed. It was poorly organized. I mean, sure I could filter the blogs by the various topics: Living Now, Media, Entertainment, Business, Politics and Off the Bus. But, frankly, after looking at the blog portal, I didn’t want to. Along with the all the authors, most of their blog posts head straight into quoting other people. I didn’t think I was the type to be intimidated by new thing, but all the unknown faces and quotes by unknowns was a turn-off. The blog portal of The Huffington Post site does offer a few saving graces for the confused first-time user, to the right it provides a bloggers index, top news, and top blog posts section, which could be helpful, if you can even find it.
November 11, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I agree–the Huffington Post is a bit overwhelming. There are so many blogs it’s confusing to even know where to start. I felt like it was a site I should like more than I did.
November 13, 2007 at 1:49 am
I don’t even like the blog filter options. I still think they’re too vague even though they’re supposed to narrow things down. “Living now” could mean a lot of things, for instance. There also could be a lot of overlap, such as between “Media” and “Entertainment” or with “Politics” and any number of other filters. I guess that’s okay, though, but when a site needs THAT many filter options, maybe there are simply too many blogs in the first place. I am very simple with my online usage and actually prefer the less techno-savvy but more user-friendly option in almost every case.