The Huffington Post Over Time
Since May 9th, 2005, The Huffington Post has been publishing news stories on their ever growing website. Researching the The Huff Post through IA’s Wayback Machine has shown some interesting changes for the site over the last 12 years. Their changes, and lack of, in design and content show how one website was able to grow tremendously over the last 12 years.
When the The Huff Post first opened their electronic doors the Web their design was very basic. They started with a green and white color scheme, little cartoons here and there. The website didn’t cover the entire computer screen, and their layout of their articles was a little cluttered.
As you can see, The Huffington Post started out with very little. Looking through their website on May 9th, 2005 their content was mostly blog posts from important people like Larry David and Ellen DeGeneres. They had articles that focused on foreign affairs, politics, and sometimes technology or religion. Interesting enough, articles they are showing back then are similar to ones the website posts now.
With time moving on and the web changing quickly, The Huffington Post was able to keep up. Pictured below is the halfway point between May 9th, 2005 and February 17th, 2017.
Obviously the design is very different, but there are still some aspects that are the same. The website is bigger and starts to take up more of the screen. There are links available so people can easily navigate to articles about certain topics. A login and sign up button is located at the top right corner along with connections to other social media sites.
Sadly, with all of these new links added in it makes the website looks a lot more cluttered. This is a screenshot from May 31st, 2011 so it is understandable that there are a lot of links everywhere. I believe that during this time websites had a lot of links all over the place. The theme was clutter and links and The Huffington Post worked with that.
Now, their content on the front page during this time focuses on different top hit stories from each of the links from the top. They still have the featured blog post of different people contributing to a variety of topics. An interesting point to make is that The Huffington Post is still covering the type of content they did when they first started. As they have added more topics, they have been covering a lot of the same material.
These changes from the beginning to the middle reflect how additions of other topics attract more users. The very visible links give users of this time an easier way to connect directly with The Huffington Post on other social media sites. This year was also a time when social media sites were starting to really take off. My generation was starting to find ourselves online connecting with people and information from across the globe. Through connecting with other users online, The Huffington Post grew their site from using sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Finally, The Huffington Post today shows how quickly the web has evolved in only six years.
The most noticeable difference is clearly the design. Their cluttered mess transformed to a minimalists style that reflects the clean cut era of web design in 2017. They limited the amount of links they have at the top, changed the links for social media to symbols, and have made it look cleaner overall. These changes are important to note because web design is very important to users. If the design isn’t simple than users won’t take the time to figure it out. With this, the simple layout gives The Huffington Post the continuous growing audience that comes to it website to receive updates on current events.
Lastly, their content on the front page today is centered mostly on politics. With everything that has been happening, The Huffington Post has been providing the leftists view of media on politics. This also has an impact on the growing audience as more people begin to look for specific media catering to their own viewpoints.
Over the last 12 years, The Huffington Post has changed their design and have only added to their content. The drastic difference between their first day in 2005 and today shows how much can change over 12 years. Even the past 6 years have shown drastic change in web. We can only image how much will change in the next 12 and how The Huffington Post will continue to grow their audience and site.
