Can ‘Living Stories’ Bring Newspapers Into the 21st Century? by Nancy Herther, Newsbreaks (Dec 14)
Will Google's new Living Stories breath new life into the news? It organizes stories thematically for easier reading and updates. (Presume editors pick the stories.)
Three key design concepts drove the development. First, a news story should be connected in a single webpage location rather than be scattered across the web connected by URLs. This allows users to either quickly scan the news or to easily drill down to get the level of detail that they need.The second concept was ease of exploration. Each story in Living Stories has "an evolving summary of current developments as well as an interactive timeline of critical events. Stories can be explored by themes, significant participants or multimedia."
Lastly, Google wanted a system that would support "smarter reading." If you log into the system, updates to key stories will be highlighted every time you return, and older news will be summarized to save space and time. They are still linked to the page, but they are not given the priority placement and space that they had in previous user visits to the site.
It's a matter of repackaging. This model might work for others - or at least show to others that new models are needed.
Posted by Gwen at December 14, 2009 04:15 PM