Salon.com...it's the bomb.

Let me start off by saying that I am a novice when dealing with web magazines. I believe it is definitely an interesting concept but hard to execute successfully. With that being said I believe salon.com fulfills the criteria of what a good web magazine should be.

First, I think the design of the website is very intriguing. The color catches the reader’s attention and the layout is easy to navigate through. The sections of the magazine remind me more of a newspaper but Salon gives me the feeling that it is the web magazine for newspaper readers, yet still hip enough to attract young readers.

Something that I really like about the site is that they utilize visuals very well being that there are many pictures on the opening web page. The categories are well labeled and many of the different articles are posted below for easy reading.
There are many different categories of articles but I think my favorite would have to be the life section. It features human interest stories that include celebrities to the everyday average joe. The article about the rise and fall of Tiger Woods is impeccably written although short. It does a good job of including viral videos within the article and another interesting fact is that when there is an article written about a specific person the other articles written about that same person appear in chronological order, giving more detail to story that was previously read. http://www.salon.com/life/tiger_woods/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2009/12/02/tiger_woods_in_trouble

Something else that I like is that option of having the most read articles and “hot topics” buttons to get the best news the fastest. Some readers don’t like the option of sifting through the magazine to find what they want to read about so I applaud this option.

The widgets are pretty cool being able to broadcast the stories through blogger and Twitter making the stories more accessible through social networking and readers who want to respond/blog have that option as well.

The site also has a store as well where readers can buy books that were/are critiqued in the magazine which is something I never seen before.

Overall I really like Salon.com, and can’t say too many bad things about it. However I feel like the site is geared toward a certain demographic and while that’s ok I feel like everyone stories should be included in this innovative web magazine.