Guardian supports newspaper relaunch with online revamp

Revolution UK 24-Oct-05

Guardian Unlimited is planning a raft of online ventures to coincide with the £80m Berliner-format relaunch of The Guardian.

New additions to the travel and music sections aim to build synergy
between the print and web versions.

Readers will be able to download a top 10 of tracks, voted for by users
in the new 'Reader Recommends Culture Vulture' section of the web site

(www.guardian.co.uk).

The company is in discussions with several digital partners to provide
downloads, which are likely to include iTunes.

To build dialogue in the travel section, the web site is using 'Wikis',
a type of software that allows users to add and edit information. 'Been
There' asks users to supply information on cities they have visited to
create travel guides. It follows the same model as free encyclopedia
site Wikipedia.org, which hosts about 500,000 articles.

Adam Freeman, deputy ad director at Guardian Newspapers, said: "We're
using the internet as a way to gather interesting information from
people, where it is easy to build communities, and then summarise it and
pick the best bits for the paper."

Several cosmetic changes are to be made to the site to reflect the
new-look paper, but a decision has yet to be made on what will
change.

This comes after a two-week promotion to offer the digital edition,
which normally costs £9.99 a month, for free during September.

The Guardian's relaunch was supported by a major ad campaign through DDB
London and achieved a dramatic 40 per cent leap in sales on its first
day of distribution.