MSNBC Web site gets relevant
Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
MSNBC is preparing a redesign of its Web site that will debut on Saturday. In a note to readers, MSNBC.com Publisher Charles Tillinghast says the site will have a "crisp design and faster-loading pages" with "more stories that matter to you." Sounds like the Web site will be using some relevancy technology that serves up items the reader may be interested in based on the types of stories the reader peruses most often. Annoyed users can either modify the criteria or turn the feature off entirely. Every story page will display contextually related stories, headlines, photos and videos, the note says. And in further proof that telling the news is only half the story anymore, the Web site will also list the most popular stories on the site on each page, as well as the most e-mailed stories and those with the highest reader ratings. Now that Britney Spears is with child and Michael Jackson has been found not guilty of being with children, maybe readers will get interested in Iraq again. Who am I kidding?!