USA Today, the nation’s largest newspaper, has introduced social media (web 2.0) features to their website, and in a big way. From the announcement:
“Our website has a new look. But the real change is in the approach, not the appearance.
With the new features we’ve introduced on the site, readers will have the ability to:
• Scan other news sources directly on USATODAY.com;
• See how readers are reacting to stories;
• Recommend stories and comments to other readers;
• Comment directly on stories;
• Participate in discussion forums;
• Write reviews (of movies, music and more);
• Contribute photos;
• Better communicate with USA TODAY staff.”
Most of these new features will be very familiar to social media junkies, however, by making these changes, USA Today has just introduced millions of its readers to social media for the first time. So how good a job did they do? I’ll take you through a quick walk through of their features and let you decide for yourself.
The first and most obvious feature will be seen by users upon visiting USA Today’s site.
As you can see, the site’s new “approach” involves a Digg or Reddit like system of users voting or “Recommend”-ing the stories they find most interesting. And of course, what voting system would be complete without a corresponding “Popular” page?
Naturally to be able to vote on stories or save your favorite stories, users must first register for an account. Once again, this is nothing new to experienced social media users and the interface is fairly intuitive. Upon logging in, users are taken to their personal home page or control panel.
Right off the bat users are introduced to the plethora of options available to them which have been incorporated from several different social media or web 2.0 sites. They can message friends or leave comments on stories and blog entries through a MySpace or Facebook inspired functionality.
Users can create photo albums to share with the world reminiscent of what some call the original web 2.0 site, Flickr.
USA Today even allows users to create blog posts of their own. To be honest, the inclusion of this feature surprised me a bit as it will require quite a lot of oversight and monitoring to deter abuse or entries that could become a source of embarrassment for the paper.
One obvious feature that users will likely miss is the ability to submit or suggest stories of their own a la Reddit or Digg. However, given the fact that USA Today is a news source in and of itself, and also has an enormous staff of it’s own writers, the absence of that feature shouldn’t come as a surprise.
So there you have it folks, the nation’s largest newspaper has adopted the social media model and jumped into web 2.0 with both feet. If nothing else, the move will expose millions of new users to social media and all the options and interactions it has to offer. But, as a social media aficionado what do you think of USA Today’s social media effort?
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