Washingtonpost.com Launches Two Home Pages — Just Two?

Ramblings

from the doesn't-seem-like-enought dept

Eric Easter from the Washington Post writes in with the not all that exciting news that the Washington Post has launched two (count ’em) home pages (also, if you must submit your own news, please don’t just cut and paste a press release and please offer a link instead of making us hunt it down ourselves). Anyway, the idea is pretty simple (and I’m pretty sure we’ve heard about it before). Local readers in the DC area get one site, and readers outside the area get another one. That makes a little bit of sense as the readers probably are looking for different things. All the content is there, but it’s slightly different for each group. However, it’s 2005. Having two different websites seems incredibly lame. People are used to being able to set up completely customized news sites using various portals or news aggregators. If you want local news, just use Topix.net and let them aggregate it for you. Considering that newspapers often put out different paper editions for different locations, this is just copying that idea, rather than recognizing that newspapers need to offer a much more customizable experience. Also, how does the Post know where people are? Oh right, it forces them to register — which means many people are lying anyway, especially on a site like Washingtonpost.com that asks really invasive questions. The trick to getting people to accurately register is to give users something of actual value. Two different web sites doesn’t seem to meet that criteria.