MUMBAI: News brpadcaster CNN has relaunched its site cnn.com. The aim is to be an intuitive, integrated Web site that puts users within a click of the global, international and local news and information they find most relevant to them.
With the site’s enhancements and redesign, users can access the news of the day through a story package that provides text, images, video, related stories and user-generated content. Also, the live online video content that was available through the subscription-only CNN Pipeline becomes woven into the fabric of CNN.com and is available to all CNN.com users for free, making the service even more dynamic and user-friendly.
CNN News Services executive VP Susan Grant says, “To simply describe this relaunch as a site redesign grossly understates what we’re doing at CNN.com. This goes beyond the next level of online news and jumps straight into a fully integrated experience in which articles, videos, images and user-generated content all come together to give users a more enriching, immediate interaction with the news content and information they need and want.”
Improvements to CNN.com and its international edition include:
• Integrated multimedia storytelling that puts text, videos, photos, maps, charts and more all accessible on one page. Tabbed elements allow easy access to a variety of media types, allowing users to determine themselves how they get the news they want.
• Presentation of video has been improved. This includes CNN’s online video archive stretching across its 27 year history – all free of charge without need for downloads. A new on-demand video player offers a Flash-based, play-in-page experience complete with larger and higher quality video and tools to create playlists and provide feedback. A live player provides access to up to four live video streams, one of which is guided by CNN.com-exclusive news anchors – the only offering of its kind on the Web.
• More ways for users to engage in news through feedback, content submissions from users with I-Report articles, video, photos and and blog commentaries.
• Locally relevant content, allowing users to personalize CNN.com to offer enhanced weather forecasts and personalized local headlines. This content comes from various sources and content-sharing relationships, including CNN.com’s affiliates and the recently announced strategic alliance with Internet Broadcasting, the US’ largest publisher of TV station Web sites.
• Links to content available on other news and information sites and blogs as part of CNN’s commitment to being a good web citizen.
• Better TV promotion on the site to improve the complementarity of CNN’s TV and online services
There is a Hot Topics section front that provides in-depth multi-media content based on timely, newsworthy stories; The All About pages give users access to an archive of stories that CNN.com – and other selected media sources - have published on almost any subject; The We Recommend feature, which presents users with stories and videos from CNN.com and other content partners based on the user’s past CNN.com browsing history.
· “From the Blogs” feature, which aggregates comments from blogs around the Web discussing either a specific story or topics related to one published on CNN.com.
· Highlights at the top of every article, which enable users to scan and digest story details quickly, and a “Next” link, which allows them to browse through story highlights quickly. CNN.com also directs users to related content, one way in which the site reveals connections between stories.
