24/7 TV news websites: Part 7 - ITN

Over the last few days I've been looking at I've the websites of Europe and the UK's English language 24/7 news channels, exploring the Web 2.0 features they offer. So far I've looked at Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN, Euronews and France 24.

Today I wanted to turn my attentions to the ITN website. Without a parent channel, which was closed in December 2005, and with minimal branding these days on ITV for their productions, their site has little to reinforce any kind of brand image. It is very lightly designed, with the ITN logo and a drop-shadow on the images being about the only identifying graphical elements that prevent it looking like an unstyled wireframe. This is a little deceptive however, as the site has some advanced features.

On the right-hand side of the homepage there is a call-to-action inviting users to add ITN News search to their Google Toolbar. I'm surprised how few news sources online offer custom search solutions for browsers and toolbars. Below the Toolbar promo there is a promo to subscribe to ITN's podcasts.

The site also features a tag cloud in the homepage left-hand navigation, of terms related to the headlines. Clicking links within the tag cloud takes the user to a 'tag' homepage, aggregating recent stories with that tag. The 'tag' homepage features another related terms tag cloud for the stories on the page, and so this builds into a very neat way of navigating laterally through news by person, concept or location.

RSS feeds

ITN produces RSS feeds. The main feed is auto-discoverable by browsers from the homepage, and is promoted with a large blue RSS icon in the left-hand navigation.

Although there doesn't seem to be an overall list of RSS feeds or help page for users, ITN outputs a considerable amount of RSS content. Each of the 'tags' generates a feed, so users are able to track individual topics, people and places appearing in ITN news.

Blogs, Comments and Voting

The ITN site does not appear to carry any user-generated content or votes. There does not appear to be any blogs or blog-like content on the site either.

Social bookmarking

ITN do include social bookmarking links at the bottom of their stories. A panel includes buttons for del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Newsvine and GNN.

Tomorrow I will be looking at Russia's English Language contribution to the 24/7 news environment with a review of the Russia Today website.

This post is one of a series looking at the websites of the 24/7 TV news channels most widely broadcast in Europe and the UK.
It features in-depth reviews of the Web 2.0 features of the Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Euronews, France 24, ITN, Russia Today and Sky News websites.
If you liked this post, you might also be interested in Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 are British newspaper web sites?, or Chipwrapper, a search engine for British media.

Additional research by Claire Forrest.

Posted by Martin Belam, January 17, 2008
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