I've been reading several of the reviews of the new USAToday Web site that includes almost every social software design trick in the book. The reactions are pretty much bimodal: you either love it or you hate it. No one is neutral.
Hated it: USAToday - a brave new mess
Loved it: USAToday.com Refashions Itself as a Social Network
I actually liked the design. Sure they buried ads right in the middle of the copy, but I'd rather have that than pagination any day. I had a hard time finding some of the social software features. They weren't readily apparent from a casual browse. Perhaps they would be more obvious if I actually registered and created my own page. I wasn't about to do that. If they accepted an OpenID I might have done it, but I'm just tired of creating profile after profile after profile, so unless it's really compelling I'm not going there.
I spent about 30 minutes looking around, kicked the tires pretty good, and then started looking for the syndication feeds so I could subscribe to Tech, Sports, and Money. I found this through their site map: USATODAY.com RSS Feeds. I'll be darned if I could find the feeds on any of the content pages. You had to really want to subscribe to syndication feeds to find them.
I suspect that I will never return to their home page again. Even though I personally liked the design I don't go to "destination" sites anymore. The bottom-line is their site design just doesn't matter- social networking or not.
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