Monday, March 3, 2014

Bloomberg View Gets A Makeover and Relaunches As A Standalone Site

Bloomberg View, an online opinion play created by Blommberg L.P in 2011, relaunches its own URL, bloombergview.com, with a new slick and mobile-friendly layout. This is the second property from the Bloomberg Empire that has a standalone site, along with the company’s marquee glossy, Bloomberg Businessweek.

The revamp of Bloomberg View, which until now was home to Bloomberg Markets, Bloomberg Pursuits and Bloomberg TV, reflects the evolving consumer strategy at the company and generates most of its revenue from the sale of high-priced financial-data terminals, according to a report by CapitalNewYork.com.

Bloomberg is also reviewing its print magazines and cable-news channel under the able leadership of former Atlantic Media executive Justin B. Smith. Additionally publisher Tim O'Brien pointed out that there are traditional ad units and that the goal is "to be self-sustaining. ... We want to monetize the site in any way that's logically available to us and doesn't intrude on the editorial mission." He further added that this new standalone site will allow the company to track the digital performance more closely with View’s current audience being pegged at around 1.5 million unique monthly visitors.

The very reason for this revamp of Bloomberg View is to battle against the perception that the nearly three-year-old commentary hub hasn't exactly set the media world ablaze and on a sneak preview of the newly relaunched website, the text-heavy template has been replaced with a more simplified one with responsive design that is optimized for mobile devices and customizable (from the back end) by way of square, photo-centric "tiles" that can be combined when the editors want to make a splash. Furthermore, users can now expect more data visualization and video content, while the article pages allow entry points for a core group of columnists.


According to Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton, this new redesigned site of Bloomberg View resembles the NBC News redesign this month with story cards that stack nicely on smart phones and arrange themselves into four- or five-column grids on the site’s widest, desktop view, Poynter.org reported. This is the latest mobile-first site to embrace the grid and shun visual hierarchy.

By: Savita V Jayaram

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