Critique of Web designs

Pathfinder

Resnick: The next site we're going to look at is Pathfinder. Pathfinder, as most of you probably know, is that big Time-Warner site that's sitting up there. There's a lot of great content on the Pathfinder site, but one of the problems is downloading the homepage graphic. What we've done is we haven't cached the graphic, and we're going in at 28.8, not a T1 line, because that's what most Internet users have, around 14.4, 28.8; most of them still do not have 56K or T1 lines. And take a look at how long it's taking us to download that homepage graphic. Now, I assume that Time-Warner is betting that the only thing you're going to want to do on the Web is go to their site, so it's going to be in the cache, and you're going to go back time and time again. But if that isn't the case, you're going to have to wait a while.

Seybold: But since this page changes all the time, you can't cache this page.

Resnick: That's true.

Seybold: And frankly, from my stand point, I find that I rarely will actually get into this site because I don't have the patience for it.

Resnick: That's true. I guess while we're trashing them here, we can go back and talk about a few of the good things. One of the other problems I see with the site is they are requiring people to register. HotWired requires people to register too. With Pathfinder, like HotWired, one of the problems is that you get to see only part of the site, just some basic news, and of course they let you see all the advertising without registering. But if you want to participate in any of their interactive message boards, you've got to register. My feeling is, with all the publications, it was fine when just HotWired asked you to sign in and pick a password, but now it's site after site on the Net trying to gather demographics to suit their advertisers. I think that Pathfinder is going to discourage an awful lot of people by requiring registration to get into the good stuff.

Another problem as I see is Pathfinder is going to start charging. They haven't announced how much it will be, but they're going to start, not only making people register, but making people pay as well. I think that's going to discourage people from surfing the site.

Pathfinder, essentially is what I call shovelware. In other words, it's taken the content from its print publications and simply shoveled it on-line. I mean, there's some cool interactive stuff, there's chat rooms, there's games, there's audio and video, but primarily, it's what you would read if you went to a newsstand and picked up any Time-Warner publication.

Seybold: In fact, it's less than you would read if you go to a newsstand.

Resnick: That's exactly right. So Pathfinder, even though it's big, it's glossy, it's impressive, it certainly has all the news that's fit to print and then some, I'm kind of lukewarm about the site. I'd only give it one thumb up. What do you think David?

Cole: Well, there's no question that the definition of the word shovelware is Pathfinder. I've pulled down some Entertainment Weekly pages that are obviously just pages that have been taken out of the Quark format, turned into PICT and uploaded. The product is very, very thin, and I kind of have to disagree with you on the issue of registration. You know the old New Yorker cartoon with the two dogs sitting in front of the computer, and one of them says, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." You know, when I register on these things, I'm 18 years old and I make $75,000 and I drive a Porsche. If they think they're gathering accurate demographics with these registration systems, they're out of their minds. I don't have any problem with it because I'm just spoofing with it. But there's no question, I've really got to give Pathfinder thumbs down. It's a horrible site.

Resnick: Jonathan, what do you think?

Seybold: I'm disappointed in the site. I would have expected that they could do better than this. My biggest concern with it is that it, though HotWired thinks of itself as being a new medium, this does not. I would have to agree with David on this.

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