Web 2.0 and the Daily Mail

In my previous post I mentioned that when designing a news site, there is much more to take into consideration than there would be on your average website. One of the main factors when confronting the task of creating a news site is making it more than just a newspaper online, but using the possibilities of the internet to their full potential.

Here is where I am going to introduce the term Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is a term coined by Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O‘Reilly Media, and refers to the trend in the use of WWW technology, web design than aims to enhance creativity, information sharing and collaboration amongst users. In short the way the Internet is leading media progression.

Tim O’Reilly’s offers his own brief definition.

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.”

Here are some of the popular Internet applications, which use Web 2.0 as a basis for their machinery.

Myspace and Facebook – Two popular networking sites where users can upload details, songs, share news, stories and photographs, on a personal basis or for a group or company.

RSS Feeds – Many websites now use RSS feeds to either gather their information or offer it to users in a way which means they don’t even need to visit the website. RSS feeds can be very specific; you can chose to receive news to your desktop on a very refined subject. For example I receive an RSS feed which sends new music news strictly relevant to the indie scene.

Wikipedia – Allows users to add information about any topic imaginable and edit posts made my others.

Blogging – This allows every single user of the Internet to create their own space to write their opinion on anything they want, for anyone to read.

Flash – one of the many web design techniques, which have evolved to improve user experience in browser, based applications.

Many news sites use Web 2.0 applications to do just what we want to do with Canvas, make it more than just a print publication posted on a web page.

To help with deciding how we are going to incorporate these Web 2.0 applications into our website each of us are going to analyse a different National Newspaper website to see how they make use of Web 2.0. I have chosen The Daily Mail.
The way I have decided to analyse this site is to look at it from the top of the homepage and work my way down to see at first glance how obvious the use of Web 2.0 is on this site.

The first thing I noticed is a search box at the top of the page. This application allows users of the site to search their topic of choice through either the whole of the Internet or narrow it down to just the news site. It’s a basic application used on most sites, but a very necessary one.

The use of linking on this site is a vital part of its structure. Almost every other word is a link on the homepage. To a well-experienced user of the site this would seem normal, but to others it could make it difficult to navigate. I would say that links are over used on this site. Because as well as linking to relevant articles in the stories there are also links all round the outside, which remain the same throughout the site.

Right at the bottom of the page there is the option for an RSS feed. It’s good that its there, showing that the Daily Mail is using web 2.0 to its advantage, and it also offers links to explain what RSS is and what different RSS feeds they offer. But the link could be made more obvious, maybe by using a larger button or putting it nearer the top of the page. Maybe they are concerned that by subscribing to RSS feeds users will be less likely to actually visit the site.

At the bottom of each story page there is several options, which are all Web 2.0 applications. For example there are options to share the story on applications such as Digg it and Del.icio.us and also book marking options with Reddit and Newsvine.

There is also the option the share the story with a friend by email, and to save the story so it can be read later on.

The only thing the story pages lack in terms of Web 2.0 are comment boxes so readers can give their opinions. I think interactivity on the net is a vital part of Web 2.0. Although there is a message forum for the site which gives readers an opportunity to comment on story’s. This is probably a much easier way for the site to moderate the comments they receive and can guarantee that nothing offensive gets through the system. But the worry of moderation is the possibility that by too much moderation it defeats the object of Web 2.0 because honest opinions may be deleted if the site moderators do not agree with them.