Another quicky....

I'm watching the Guardian site with interest at the moment. I thought that, with the re-branding and re-launching of the newspaper, there would be radical - or at least some changes to the site.

As far as I can see, the only change so far is that they have bullet points in some of the front page summaries now. The digital edition has changed but the main, free part of the site has remained very similar - and this is the part that new readers, captured by the new-look paper and the hype surrounding it, are going to be seeing.

Sounds a bit like a missed opportunity? Well, in many ways it is. But in other ways they're probably trying to avoid one of the horrors of launching a website with a fanfare - it's pretty easy for things to fall over. And with the number of people who are going to be looking at the site - given the media attention the change has generated - that's not really a risk worth taking.

Now, the Guardian has the resources to properly test an update to the site and probably even phase the update to make sure nothing goes wrong. But phasing it means you wouldn't get a big launch.

And besides - it wasn't the site which needed updating here - it's the site which has led to the need to update. Broadsheets, when the internet is so widely available, take far less advantage of the real benefit a newspaper has over a website - portability. While you can happily read the Sun on the tube, the Guardian is always a struggle.

Well, until now.

Edit: a little more browsing discovered this article about the site which - quite reassuringly - confirms exactly what I thought

Comments - sorry about the login thing

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If you want to get in touch, use adam[dot]maltpress[at]JuicyFly[dot]com - cheers!