USAToday.

Anybody with a fascination for Web 2.0 websites owes it to themselves to check out how USAToday, the daily national newspaper, has redesigned their website. They’ve basically taken a huge leap ahead into the social news future.

Who knows if this future is a happy one, but it will be fun to watch it evolve, and I’m bookmarking the site – even though I’m not a regular USAToday reader nor have I used the site in the past. It’s that compelling.

For starters, every article has a recommend option – without a login. Go ahead, click an “up arrow” icon, you’ll see the number increase. This impacts what headlines appear on the front page. All the headlines link to content on the USAToday site. USAToday also takes a stab at blogs, as every story now supports comments – with a user login of course. But what’s an effect of having users login? Well, you instantly an opportunity for a web-based community. So each user has a profile page, and a personal avatar appears next to their comments throughout the site.

Can you see why this is pretty interesting? USAToday has, in one fell swoop, gone from being just another newspaper petrified of the future, to an interactive site with many of the Web 2.0 trappings – community, comments, ratings, and user profiles. And right away, this site has some advantages over many Web 2.0 startups – content, reporters, writes, editors, and readers.

I even drilled down into the movie reviews and noticed that you can review a movie and rate it from one to five stars. The ratings are added up and the average star rating is listed for said movie. Obviously, the folks at USAToday have spent a lot of time digging into details, and thinking about what cool stuff could come from all the user interactivity.

I really hope this succeeds and boosts the traffic to USAToday.com. This could be a way forward for newspapers that are being squeezed by a scary future. They certainly earn credit for giving it a try rather than sitting still and waiting to be pushed. Even if it might be an idea ahead of its time.

Note: For the opposite view, check out some of the annoyed reader comments on the site – complaints that the improvements are pointless, the design is confusing and cluttered, and questioning the need to get social and build community around a newspaper. All valid concerns.

Additional Reading: TechCrunch, RexBlog, Trends in the Living Networks, 10e20, BaronVC

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