Assignment 3: News Aggregator

Upon going through both news aggregators for a while I reached the conclusion that Google news is the better one as it was easier to navigate and not as overwhelming as Huffington.

Both have the same function of providing the audience with news, but each has their own way of doing so. One just happens to present its content in a much easier to follow layout, but before I get into that let me mention some of the similarities between the two. Upon visiting either website the first thing to catch the eyes is the current top story which is boldly presented front and center. The search bar for both webs is placed near the top of the page where it is easily visible and both have a plethora of news stories listed beneath the top story.

This is where the websites begin to stray from each other. The way the stories are listed beneath differ and honestly one does a better job than the other in listing the the stories in an organized manner:

 Huffington Post has its stories listed as seen on the left. Not very effective and a bit overwhelming for the eyes. It looks crowded and reminds me of those fishy looking ads from other websites that try to fish you in with curious headlines.
                                                             



Here on the right is a screenshot of the way news stories are listed on Google News. They are listed just like, well, a list, which is much easier to follow. It looks much more organized than Huffington and the stories are grouped together with other similar stories. Note the header that says World then has world stories listed underneath. That's a plus, as opposed to Huffington that seemingly just threw all the stories it could fit on the page together in a jumbled mess.

Next thing needed to be discussed is what happens when you click on a story that has piqued your interest. Google news opens the story in a new tab, Huffington doesn't. Honestly, it's preferable for a link to open up to a different tab, especially on a news website where one would have to scroll through and find the place where they left off if the story opens on the same page. It is arguable that Google does this solely because all of the news it presents comes from a different source, so by default it has to open a tab to said source as opposed to Huffington that is its own source. But, have you considered that Google could have just redirected itself to source website instead of going through the trouble of opening another tab for you? Because it could have totally done that and didn't. Good on you Google.

Another thing to note is the way the topics of news are presented. Google's is listed on the side as to where Huffington's is listed on top. When you click on a topic of news on the Huffington website it takes you to all the stories having to do with said topics. The stories are presented in the same way as they are on the front page, in a headache inducing mess. When you click on a topic on Google it lists all the stories pertaining to said topic in the same neat fashion as the home page.. In addition to this, if you look to the left again you'll see that under the topic you clicked on is now a list of subtopics. Neat! With this function Google gives users the ability to further narrow down the plethora of news they're given. They have given the user a sense of control with that.

Rolling off of that note, one of the things that stands out about Google News over the Huffington Post is the option of personalization:

The user is given more control over the news they are given with this option. The user can choose the sources they want news from and which topics interest them over others. The option of personalization is something that usually wins the crowd over.

So upon a bit of messing around on each separate website it is clear that Google is a much better news aggregator than Huffington. It has a neater, easy to follow layout and it gives power to the user, two of the most prominent specs for websites.