Good bye stars, hello mood meter

Just saw this fun little execution posted by the good people over at Brandflakes. 

A local NBC news site replaced the typical star ranking with something a little more telling. Readers now click a reaction to each story - things like furious, thrilled, bored or laughing. The results can be pretty funny. But, maybe I just think that because the example I found was 68% of people thrilled with an editorial call for Marion Barry to just go away! Voice of the people, baby. 

Comments

[Mr. Smith]

They've since tweaked the design of this since rolling it out (It now says "Locals are..." instead of "NBC Chicago/New York/etc. is..." but I'm still not a fan of the mood meter or what this redesign has done for their local news coverage or their branding:

http://ourmaninchicago.blogspot.com/search/label/NBC%20Chicago

Also worth noting: A writer for NBC's local Chicago site resigned after some shady ethics by its execs, which resulted in two posts being "disappeared" from their site:

http://chicagoist.com/2009/12/22/steve_rhodes_local_journalist_and.php

[Chris Groves]

I love it!