CNN Pressroom - Enhancements Incorporate Extensive User Feedback to Improve Usability, Interactivity of Site
Reaffirming its position as the leading Internet site for news and information, CNN.com unveiled on Sunday, July 1, the latest evolution in online news: an intuitive, integrated Web site that puts users within a click of the global, national and local news and information they find most relevant to them.

With the site’s enhancements and redesign, users can access the news of the day through a story package that provides text, images, video, related stories and user-generated content. Also, the live online video content that was available through the subscription-only CNN Pipeline becomes woven into the fabric of CNN.com. All CNN.com video, live and on-demand is available to users for free, making the site’s news video offering the most extensive on the Web.

“To simply describe this relaunch as a site redesign grossly understates what we’re doing at CNN.com,” said Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services. “This goes beyond the next level of online news and jumps straight into a fully integrated experience in which articles, videos, images and user-generated content all come together to give users a more enriching, immediate interaction with the news content and information they need and want.”

The goal of CNN.com’s latest evolution is to enhance and simplify online news for consumers to allow them to access and interact with their information in more ways than ever before. To that end, improvements to CNN.com and its international edition include:

· Integrated multimedia storytelling that puts text, videos, photos, maps, charts and more all accessible on one page. Tabbed elements allow easy access to a variety of media types, allowing users to determine themselves how they get the news they want.

· The most news video on the Web with larger video screen. Both live and on-demand video – including CNN’s massive online video archive – are available free of charge without need for downloads. A new on-demand video player offers a Flash-based, play-in-page experience complete with larger and higher quality video and tools to create playlists and provide feedback. A live player provides access to up to four live video streams, one of which is guided by CNN.com-exclusive news anchors – the only offering of its kind on the Web.

· Locally relevant content, allowing users to personalize CNN.com to offer enhanced weather forecasts and personalized local headlines. This content comes from various sources and content-sharing relationships, including CNN.com’s more than 860 CNN Newsource affiliates and the recently announced strategic alliance with Internet Broadcasting, the nation’s largest publisher of TV station Web sites.

“If there was an ‘easy button’ for getting all your news in one place, the relaunched CNN.com would be it,” said David Payne, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com. “Every element of the site, from the user interaction to the design, was done with simplicity and usability in mind.”

Additional new features and enhancements of note include:

· “Hot Topics,” section fronts that provide in-depth multi-media content based on timely, newsworthy stories.

· “All About” pages, thousands of pages giving users access to an archive of stories that CNN.com – and other selected media sources – have published on almost any subject.

· “We Recommend” feature, which presents users with stories and videos from CNN.com and other content partners based on the user’s past CNN.com browsing history.

· “From the Blogs” feature, which aggregates comments from blogs around the Web discussing either a specific story or topics related to one published on CNN.com.

· Highlights at the top of every article, which enable users to scan and digest story details quickly, and a “Next” link, which allows them to browse through story highlights quickly. CNN.com also directs users to related content, one way in which the site reveals connections between stories. As an effort to be a good Web citizen, CNN.com also offers links to content available on other news and information sites and blogs.

· More ways for users to engage in news through feedback, content submissions with I-Report articles, video, photos and and blog commentaries.

As the first Internet site dedicated to 24-hour news coverage, CNN.com attracts an average of more than 24 million unique users each month. Launched in 1995, CNN.com draws from the resources of CNN Worldwide to provide relevant, up-to-the minute news and information. CNN.com features the latest multimedia technologies, from video streaming and user-generated content to audio packages and searchable archives of news features and background information.