A Word About Our New Look

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A Word About Our New Look

Dear Readers,

For almost eight (yes!) years—beginning as a humble blog and now as part of a big, multinational publishing company—we’ve chronicled the media and entertainment industries’ adoption of new ideas. And, now it’s our turn: As you may have noticed, we’re updating our design and functionality.

First, here’s what hasn’t changed with the redesign to our sites and newsletters: We’re still committed to bringing you the most essential news, analysis and commentary on digital media and entertainment in a timely fashion.

Here’s what is new – and we think you’ll like it. To take advantage of some of the new features, you’ll need to register here:

A better 360-degree view of the sites’ content: It’s now much easier to see the latest and most-popular content both across ContentNext’s four sites and elsewhere on the web—without ever leaving whichever of our sites you happen to be on.

More personalization: You can now get company-specific and vertical-specific RSS feeds, as well as email (and soon SMS) alerts whenever there are new stories about a particular company or topic.

A new mobile site: You can now browse faster through many more articles than was possible in the previous iteration of our mobile site –- and you can do it from any mobile device.

New content: Regular contributions from thought leaders in digital media –- CEOs, funders, technologists and others –- weighing in on the big debates of the day. And, weekly columns from some of our journalists.

New Twitter features: You can follow not only the Twitter feeds for our sites but also the Tweets of our individual journalists and real-time Twitter conversations on a host of digital-media topics—all in one place.

Services listings: To our popular jobs board and finance platform, we have added our own version of classified ads for everyone from developers to ad networks.

Coming soon: An iPhone app, and more Facebook features, among other things.

Remember to register. Thanks for your loyal readership over the years, and we look forward to your feedback.

Rafat Ali

@rafatali Jun 17, 2009 3:00 AM ET

Posted In:

latest headlines

Sean

I have to admit that I don't love the new email. (My primary source of interaction with you.)

Two easy changes that I would like to see:

a) Make the PC logo a link to your main site. I sometimes get the email and want to go directly to your main page.

b) Make the headlines links to the story.

Thanks,
Sean

nemo

for some reason the new layout seems to have borked my outlook/newsgator PC & PCUK feeds. Every title now has lots of whitespace at the front..

Dan Entin

Very surprised that paidContent would add a registration function without utilizing one or more of the many authentication systems (e.g. Facebook Connect, Twitter or OpenID) that it spends quite a bit of time reporting on. Seems like an oversight.

Varun

Great new look! The newsletter layout is pretty slick too.

Emcye Edwards

Rafat et al,

Good: Classier, newzier, more mobile, Twitter-linked.
Suggest: resizing columns, reduce the pop-up, younger colors, place more nav buttons and add tiny little cash dispenser at the lower right corner.
-Thanks, then!

Mark Cardwell

Rafat,

I like the new look. But it seems to have broken the downloadable app for my phone. I read PC almost exclusively on my phone so anything you can do would be appreciated!

Thanks

Patricia Joseph

As a former graphic designer, I must say that I like the narrower column. Easier to read.

I miss the grey color, though. Grey made PC unique and easy on the eyes. Now it's black type like all the other enewsletters I get.

It was easier to get into the guts of the story with old format. Now I feel that I'm reading headlines and subheads and have to jump to get into the guts. Is that what you intended?

PC is still a must-read.

chrism

Please give me some type of summary of the article in the email. Essentially the email has become useless as a tool to skim articles you want to read.

Cara

You guys are the must read, but best to keep it simple. The blog style was more efficient to read and scan - it really worked - and it was differentiating from other sites.

Mitchell Fox

put a "return to top" button next to "keep reading" button so you don't have to scroll up to see headlines.

Stefan Constantinescu

@Giordano Contestabile: Ever think about using an RSS reader?

Giordano Contestabile

I'm sorry, Rafat, but I really don't like the new site. In fact, it has become much less useful to me. Paidcontent and MocoNews are the first thing I read in the morning, and I have to be able to scan them very quickly for interesting headlines while gulping down a coffee. The ability to do so in a couple of minutes total is crucial for me. Can we get a low-end version?

bizdevil

You gotta change the font back. Can barely read the text.

Staci D. Kramer

Thanks, Charles. Your patience and suggestions are much appreciated. Editors choose the features and sub-features, by the way.

Charles Newman

The previous site was easier/simpler but let's give the redesign some time. However: Save your real estate - no thumbnails in items below the scroll. Also, what determines your 1 feature and 2 sub-feature stories at top? Driven dynamically by popularity? Most Popular and Recent Comments can be much smaller, a la NYT.com.

Rafat Ali

Thanks everyone for the feedback, both positive and more importantly, the critical ones. This surely is a work in progress and we will keep tweaking to improve the scanability, navigation etc.

Kevin McFall

Kudos to Rafat and the ContentNext team for strategically and elegantly integrating your market research and the inevitable tide of change into a fresh new site design. Yes, it will take some getting use to, but I think your intent remains on point of insuring that the critical, timely and robust coverage of our sometimes convoluted, always exciting industry is delivered succinctly on the daily.

Stefan Constantinescu

I have to agree with what everyone else has said, do not like the new design. It was easier to navigate the old style.

jenkins

Sorry, I know people hate change, but I am also one that doesn't like the new design. Wouldn't be fair for us loyal readers to tell lies. Doesn't mean people won't get used to the new site but the old one was much easier to read.

Steve Jobs butt buddy

I have to agree with my old slip and slide friend. The blog style is straight to the point which is why I preferred this over "other" news sites. Oh well, will just have to weed through the smoke and mirrors to get the goodness.

Steve Jobs

Over-designed. I prefer the blog format—gets straight to the point in a prioritized fashion.

Rafat, are you jumping the shark? Lots of careless reporting recently as well, except from you and Staci of course. The new guys though, not very good.

Manish Jain

Rafat,

How random, for the first time in many many months I visited the actual site as opposed to reading the RSS feed. And quite surprised and the new look, very nice and continued success. I hoping to take advantage of some of the new features.

take care,

mrj

Peter Bale

Rafat
PaidContent remains the only real must-read newsletter in my inbox. New look seems elegant and clever but please don't over do the look and feel ahead of the content. It is always spot on, insightful and when opinionated is clever rather than arrogant.
Regards
Peter

Raj Kotecha

First to comment! Fantastic job CN team - really great to see things are going so well, the new site is very pleasing to the eye and will be a pleasure to read! Keep up the good work.

Best,
Raj
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rajkotecha