Aunty gets Digg

As you can see from the picture about the BBC has embraced the world of social news services - with the inclusion of links to Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Facebook and StumbleUpon at the bottom of story pages.

This is something you’ve been able to do in various ways before, but they’ve either been ugly, longwinded or very slow (due to it going through a proxy).

It’s also something news sites like the Telegraph, The Times and others (not the Guardian) have had as a feature since their most recent re-launches.

Well now you can bookmark a story you find particularly interesting with a single click on the BBC but if it’s a popular story then Digg, reddit or StumbleUpon will probably already have it listed - which always leaves me feeling slightly deflated.

It’s great that it has been added, it’s great the facility is there, but the problem is, and this is only a minor niggle - it feels like all new BBC News services - it’s just been tagged on to the end.

I know it isn’t a big deal and doesn’t really change the fact that it is there or take away from its usefulness - but it just feels tagged on.

BBC News is in need of a major redesign to bring it inline with the web2.0 world. There are so many new concepts, ideas and services surrounding the new web that the old News Template is creaking a bit.

The story pages on the Guardian site are suffering a similar problem at the moment as well. The homepage re-design looks great but the stories don’t live up to their introduction.

I’d like to see News Online re-designed to more natively include these links (instead of shoving them at the bottom) and possibly even innovate with things like ‘thought clouds’.

By ‘thought clouds’ I mean quotes from blog posts (BBC Blogs and other ‘known and trusted’ blogs) at the bottom of a news story - so something like a story on Steve Jobs being named the worlds first ‘Supreme Commander’ could include a couple of quick ‘thoughts clouds’ on a positive and negative prospective.

Something like this (ignore the stupid story - I needed a filler).

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