TechCrunch front page - proof Web 2.0 is over?

TechCrunch is the premier Valley News Blog, and we read it and like it for the content and comments - but it comes in on an RSS feed reader so I seldom look at the actual website....but today for some reason I clicked through to it, and, well...this is what I saw.



The reason my jaw dropped was the redesign from the old, simple layout to this chaotic cacophony of crowded colour - and I can't even see the Ads as I use an Ad blocker (I had a peek of an Ad laced version, which I've copied above). This is in danger of becoming the sort of kaleidoscopic jumble that gave Portals 1.0 a bad name in the End Days in their desperate attempts to garner as much eyeball attention as they could.

They're not the only ones by the way - I note quite a few of the sites I get on RSS now sport garish Ads and Pix all over them (shame on you SAI for ruining that great masthead with Big Ads).

Whatever happened to the clean, mimimalist design of the Web 2.0 revolution? Does anybody remember those principles (see below)?

1. Simplicity
2. Central layout
3. Fewer columns
4. Separate top section
5. Solid areas of screen real-estate
6. Simple nav
7. Bold logos
8. Bigger text
9. Bold text introductions
10. Strong colours
11. Rich surfaces
12. Gradients
13. Reflections
14. Cute icons
15. Star flashes

...and a lot of white space. Is it time to make Broadstuff look like a supermarket coupon sheet to keep up with the times? (Answers on a postcard...we are going to do a redesign soon, but like this?)

If one wanted graphical evidence that Web 2.0 is over, look no further!

And that, of course, is the irony - we don't.

Many (most?) tech people get the stories via RSS so miss the busy layouts, and of course any geek has some form of Ad blocking going so by definition they are not seeing the Ads served on Geek rags (aren't they - do you have Ad blocking?)

A little story for you - in the early days of interactive advertising, we built some simulators for a client so they could see how people responded to different types of screen design, and the evidence then was that confused pages confuse people. I doubt that's changed much (that was early 2000's, brains were maybe smaller), so I doubt these busier pages are attracting people any more now.

By the way, it looks like Ars Tech will win the 2008 Tech Blog of the year award at the Weblogs 2008 awards - must've been by design