Burdseed

Today’s post of the day is actually a series of posts from earlier in the week about the design of news sites.

Photo by Robert Scoble

Andy Rutledge, a designer, published an analysis of the layout of New York Times web site, along with some hypothetical changes, and used it as an example of the design challenges faced by today’s news sites. This sparked a bunch of conversation on Twitter, including from current and former designers at the times. Om summarizes the discussion nicely.

Although Rutledge missed a bit with his comments about the Times and with some of the elements of his redesign, the essence of his message is correct: many news sites desperately need to be redesigned for the modern web. This problem is not limited to news, but extends to many first-generation web portals and sites in areas such as sports, entertainment, and finance. It’s also true for many of the early web 2.0 sites. Use of the web is changing and is increasingly being driven by social, devices, video, and living room or mobile use cases. Less is more in most cases.

This is Burdseed 2.0.

Burdseed 1.0 was my tumblog, which I’ve abandoned in favor of this longer, more flexible, more lasting format. I plan to continue to use Twitter and Google+ for news and business conversations and will continue to use Facebook for family, friend, and classmate stuff. But I’m moving away from Posterous and Tumblr. Consider them a casualty of the rise of Google+.

As a result of business and family commitments, it’s been a while since I’ve sat down and written in longer form. Now that my current startup project has emerged out of stealth mode, I hope to write one or two posts a week on a number of topics that seem a bit underserved in the blogosphere, interest me, or relate to my current professional activities.

Mostly that will mean riffing about things that are happening in the areas of social TV, smart TV, digital media, and the connected home. Plus, strategy, business building, and change issues related to these areas and observations about products, deals, and M&A.