Video Review: USAToday Relaunch

The USAToday.com web site relaunched today adding social features to the site. There is some talk around the 'net about it. I agree with Rubel's comment, "This is exactly the direction USA Today needs to follow." I disagree with him when he discusses allowing a user to add a Twitter feed to their page. Is this yet another start page? This is a news site, not a site about what you ate for breakfast. And don't forget, you can always go over to the recently relaunched LATimes (video review).  Arrington says, 'The list is sort of ho-hum at first - bigger pictures, better tabs, etc. But then there are a whole bevy of social feature as well," and I agree with him. The social features are nice. The most important thing to remember is that just jamming comments and ratings is not enough to say your site is "social" - it has to be a solid change of thought. USAToday is moving in the right direction for that.

Here are some of my comments in an easy-to-digest bullet format…

• There is no doubt that some will say they "stole" or "cloned" Digg, Reddit, and MSNBC.
• Some commenters are saying that this is a white labeled Pluck (nothing wrong with this imo)
• There will be abuse of the comments in a big way since comments show up on the USAToday home page.
• Design is still sub par and takes away from the new social features.
• Usability is still poor.
• Tagging is in place, but there is no tag search.
• Stories appear in more than one category making navigation a bit odd.

Here is my video review and discussion…