CNN.com To Launch Web 2.0 Re-design This Weekend
Over the past year or so we've seen many mainstream publications 'web 2.0-ize' their web presence. BBC has been a leading force, while in March USA Today announced a re-design. Also we covered the Martha Stewart re-design in April.
Context & Ripple Effects
CNN has been telegraphing this for weeks: it opened a public beta of the redesigned site at the start of June, and in May committed to pushing far more local news onto CNN.com. This weekend's launch is the beta going live for everyone — the moment the experiment becomes the product.
The timing is competitive, not incidental. Days ago AOL relaunched its news pages borrowing blog conventions, while Read/WriteWeb frames this weekend's launch inside a wave that includes USA Today's March redesign and April's Martha Stewart refresh, with the BBC repeatedly cited as the leading force among mainstream publishers adopting Web 2.0 design.
First-order effects
- CNN exits its month-long public beta and stakes its brand identity on the redesigned site, putting it head-to-head with AOL's blog-styled news relaunch from June 26 rather than trailing the portal era.
- CNN's May commitment to heavier local-news coverage now ships inside the new design, so the layout change carries an editorial strategy along with the visual one.
Second-order effects
- Broadcast rivals are forced to answer on design terms set by the BBC and the early-moving US publishers — a redesign cycle where standing pat starts to read as falling behind.
- Readers gain comparison shopping across news brands whose interfaces increasingly resemble one another, shifting differentiation toward features like local depth and community tools rather than page aesthetics alone.
Third-order effects
- If the 2007 pattern holds — BBC first, USA Today and Martha Stewart following, CNN and AOL now aboard — 'Web 2.0-izing' becomes table stakes for mainstream media, and the next round of competition moves from look-and-feel to participation and personalization features.
- Design conventions originating in the blogging world are being absorbed by the largest broadcast and print brands, quietly redefining what a mainstream news front page is expected to do.
The trend: Mainstream news organizations are racing through a shared Web 2.0 redesign cycle in 2007, converting participatory-web conventions pioneered by blogs into baseline expectations for legacy broadcast and print brands.