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Express relaunches online, Star to follow

Posted: 20/03/07 By: Oliver Luft

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The Daily Express and its Sunday version have become the latest national newspapers to overhaul their website to make greater use of web 2.0 and community features.

The Northern and Shell owned papers soft launched the new site this morning. Stable mate the Daily Star will follow suit with its own major refit later in the year.

"We have a loyal online readership and, while we've worked hard to improve the existing Daily Express website, it needed to evolve," Geoff Marsh, Express online editor, told Journalism.co.uk.

The new site, which was developed in conjunction with Netro42 and took six months to construct, will now have a dedicated online team of reporters and provide breaking news 24-hours a day. Although Mr Marsh said its aim was still to 'complement' the newspaper.

All sections for the paper will now be available online alongside unique content and an archive which allows readers to search past stories and the community areas of the site.

The Desmond-owned publication has also introduced a string of blogs from its Sunday and Daily journalists.

The paper is aiming to get it readership even more involved with introduction of the MYExpress facility that enables users to have their own space on the site.

This area can be to personalised by filtering some content, such as weather and horoscopes, and uploading pictures. It will also be possible for users to browse through other users' profiles.

Mr Marsh said that a deal had been done with a video supplier and that video and podcasts would be added to the mix in the coming weeks once the initial launch was completed.

"I think too many newspaper people are trying to re-invent the wheel. We only want to use video where it genuinely adds something. It's easy to get carried away by the ability to put videos on a website and go berserk, as some other media groups have done.

"If we have a video that people will genuinely want to watch, we'll use it. But we're not doing it for the sake of it. With a few notable exceptions, newspaper websites have not handled video content well."

The Sun successfully relaunched last year introducing a host of features with which to interact with its readers and to deliver audio/video content.

Similarly the Mirror unveiled its new video-heavy site last month to mixed reviews after most of the content seemed designed for an American viewer.

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