Wired.com relaunched a few months back and at first exposure, I have to admit I felt a little betrayed. I always liked their quick scan of content and I had been going to the site for so long that any type of change seemed like a bad idea (this same reaction was felt when nytimes.com relaunched, which now I am fond of. It’s not you, it’s me).

But here it is, the year two-thousand and seven, june, and I must say the new site has grown on me. Certain things still don’t feel quite right (list of articles is hard to scan, usability seems to point at ad clicking trickery), but overall the biggest thing that has swayed the new site to my favor is the way they are assigning a hierarchy to their top level stories. Check it out. It’s kind of nice going to a site and having it say to you, “this is what you should be reading.” Not in an annoying in your face star burst kind of way, but in a subtle “water flows downhill” kind of way.

Then I went there today…

…and decided that the marketing department hates their visitors. Nothing is more irritating than being shown the content you desire, only to have a big stupid ad flash in front of it. Not only does this reduce my brand loyalty to Wired, it also reduces my brand loyalty to whomever paid for this big flashing blob of annoyance.

In this case “the new at&t.” But I wouldn’t write a whole post sparked by just an normal advertisement would I? Nope! This ad wouldn’t go away. The choppy animation finished and then it stayed, just like how it looks below. I couldn’t access the primo content. WTF Wired? Shouldn’t they be testing for Firefox OSX users? In reading some user comments around the site, I noticed others felt my pain. I wanted to yell and scream.

The trials and tribulations of a web user, sigh….

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