The folks behind TIME magazine at TIME Inc. have just launched their new technology website dubbed Techland. The new website has many old faces from TIME on its masthead including their Tech editor Lev Grossman who’ll be a regular contributor.
They’ll cover the more ‘user orientated’ area of the market with much of their categories revolving around products and less about news. These categories include Gadgets, Gaming, Culture and Videos.
Overall, it looks like a good website from a reliable bunch however the design is a little sloppy and I’d imagine they’ll be tidying things up a bit as the site grows. The ties with TIME are still evident with many of their information pages such as ‘Contact Us’ leading directly to TIME’s customer services page.
b5media one of the worlds largest blog networks has just launched a new home page design. I think the new design is a huge improvement from the previous one.
Navigation through the new site is a lot easier, and now it highlights nicely the key blogs within the network and all the network stats. However, it is a great start from the team.
The main downside is still the lack of ability to purchase advertising across the network and target the niche or sites that you wish. I think the strategy of the company is great, but they still seem to be lacking in the key area on monetization. Individual blogs are now running a variety of advertising from Google Adsense to Tribal Fusion, but there still seems to be no coherency. Additionally, the blog design for individual blogs is terrible, it really needs to be looked at and professionalised. Im sure they have some great blog designers in the team, but they never seem to use them.
