Breakdown: CNN.com

The theme of the site, as mentioned in the page header, is “Breaking News”. CNN provides a news service to online users regarding topics and locales of all interests. The site domain is identical to the brand name, making the site to service correlation simple.

The site’s content is created by various individuals, but is all curated in the main site. In addition, based upon the sub-topic, the stories are further curated again. While one might not think that the information is curated, it ties back into their main theme: breaking news, where the newest and most relevant topics are positioned first.

Of course, the most critical component of the site is its update frequency. If you look closely to the top left corner under the menu (on the english sites), there is a time stamp for the last “update” time. Furthermore, if you refresh the site with new news, occasionally a banner will appear above all featured content. This banner contains yellow and black, standing out from the white and red background for the site displaying a “Breaking News” and a short headline.

The site provides options to switch between US, International, Japanese, Arabic, and other setups. In addition to changing languages, it also changes featured content. Also, the logo is slightly altered depending upon the sub-site. Furthermore, it changes the menu navigation bars. I believe this is best suited to the audience it is trying to reach, where a person is either interested in a particular region or world news. The site divides content into 2 major segments, featured and non-featured content. The non-featured content is significantly more difficult to navigate to, residing at the bottom of the site. However, the featured pieces accent the most recent pieces, and the layout of various clips, photos, and streams of headlines reinforce the notion of breaking news that is readily available.