No Man’s Blog

I’m getting increasingly addicted to The Daily Beast. I actually can’t remember when was the last time a website made me so very gratified. Ooh they got it so right they’ve created such a refreshing, innovative and compelling experience.

If you didn’t stumble upon it yet, it’s the new baby of Tina Brown. Only way to describe it is as news editor, aggregator, creator, synthesizer and remixer. The editors team describe it as “the omnivorous friend who hears about the best stuff and forwards it to you with a twist”.

It has truly delightful user interface.

I can’t remember where I read a designer uttering words of wisdom along the lines of ‘get rid of your concept of primarily designing ‘pages’ as building blocks and start designing experiences’ and this is exactly what they did in the Daily Beast.

It is built from modules of experiences with quirky titles like Big Fat Story, for example, a simple flow-chart like presentation of a big topical story, where each box is an article taken from a different source around the world/web (The Guardian, NYT, Reuters, Bloomberg) each brings a different angle of the story creating bigger picture, within deeper and richer context in the most non-intimidating way possible (hover on for a sneak preview tooltip or click the link to go to the original source). Cutting straight through the clutter that is abundance, The Daily Beast is providing you more content yet with a far lighter feeling than any other news website.

Or the Cheat sheet, a collection of 10 must read stories/articles from around the world. Intriguing sometimes abstract adjectives, like prickly, connected, same sex or caught red handed titled the stories. I particularly like the Extra Insight offered whenever the editors found additional link that adds depth to the story. User participation/contribution is enabled by thumbs up/down voting whether this article is Cheat Sheet worthy as well as by inviting readers to suggest a better link. Comments are open on all original stories.

Also great are the Video Cheat Sheet and the Buzz Board with their super-clever navigation. And to complement this fantastic curation of the news, there are the excellent resident blogs – a roster of top notch writers including the chief editor Tina Brown, contributing their wisdom and wit to the mix. Finally, but that probably won’t last for so long, for now, TDB is advertising free.

There is a chance the Daily Beast will soon replace my 8 years long homepage.

I was happy to find them on Twitter, (for they finding me on Twitter, actually). At the moment they just promote their own links and I’m hoping they will be able to innovate on this platform as well. I can find your links on my own, thanks very much – think how we can further build relationships and in what ways you can add value on/through Twitter.