Sunday, August 13, 2006
Note to Australian newspaper websites. It's just the little things that demonstrate how easy it would be for Australian news sites to make their content Web 2.0 friendly, and yet how far they lag behind their US and UK equivalents.
This I found at the bottom of a story from Britain's Telegraph, a website with which Fairfax should be reasonably familiar, given that it reprints so many Telegraph features rather than commissioning them from local writers.
Seriously, though, these little things really increase site traffic, as well as achieving the less measurable goal of showing that 'old media' are responsive to 'new media' developments. They make existing information-sharing tools work with the content in a simple, elegant way. And best of all, they don't require huge policy shifts, new content delivery ideas or site redesigns.
Update, 14 August: Ben has pointed out that News.com.au does much the same thing. Nice buttons, too.
Their stories also have blog-style comments. On ordinary news stories, not tucked away in a 'blog section'! I admit that News.com.au's old site was so crap that I still think of it as a worse online resource and don't visit it often, even though it's recently been revamped. But they have really made an effort. Go Rupert! Go!
This I found at the bottom of a story from Britain's Telegraph, a website with which Fairfax should be reasonably familiar, given that it reprints so many Telegraph features rather than commissioning them from local writers.
Seriously, though, these little things really increase site traffic, as well as achieving the less measurable goal of showing that 'old media' are responsive to 'new media' developments. They make existing information-sharing tools work with the content in a simple, elegant way. And best of all, they don't require huge policy shifts, new content delivery ideas or site redesigns.
Update, 14 August: Ben has pointed out that News.com.au does much the same thing. Nice buttons, too.
Their stories also have blog-style comments. On ordinary news stories, not tucked away in a 'blog section'! I admit that News.com.au's old site was so crap that I still think of it as a worse online resource and don't visit it often, even though it's recently been revamped. But they have really made an effort. Go Rupert! Go!
