Fishburn Hedges

25.05.2010

The twittersphere certainly hasn’t been short of comment today following the unveiling of the new Times and Sunday Times websites. On his blog, Rory Cellan-Jones has one of the best summaries of the look and feel of both sites and of the main points in the paywall debate (which continues to rage on).Existing Times fans will be pleased to see that all the old favourite sections remain and are well laid-out. For comms professionals there are a couple of new opportunities, one of which is the letters to editor section which is much higher profile and easier to find (under Opinion) than it was previously. This development, along with the introduction of full-name only comments, is particularly interesting in the way that it draws more attention to reader-generated content.It’s difficult to tell what effect this will have on the quality of debate taking place on the site. It could be that we see fewer comments of a higher quality or alternatively, an increase in comments among a small group who will enjoy broadcasting their views behind the paywall and therefore among a niche audience.In any case, both sites are well designed and easy to navigate so everyone should have a surf around while we continue to watch this space!Posted by Joanna Kwiatkowska