Take a look at the NYTimes.com’s beautiful video ghetto.

After watching an excellent animation produced by Zach Wise and Danielle Belopotosky about securities lending, I was looking for context: any and all related content. There was none to be found. Sure, if I wanted to watch another video, perhaps starring Andy Rooney or about the future of television, it was right there, but there was no content related to New Orleans, banking, the economy, nada. NYTimes.com effectively walls off their video content from the rest of their content.

This strategy definitely results in a very tidy, pretty page, but how functional is it?

The problematic assumption here is this: I watched a video, therefore I will be interested in watching other videos. This assumption is sometimes valid, but it wasn’t in my case and I doubt its valid the majority of the time. I watched this video because I was interested in learning about how the city of New Orleans was being gamed by the banking system. Once I was done, I was interested in reading more NYTimes.com content related to that. Why is it nowhere to be found? 

I wonder how high the bounce rate is on these video permalinks.

Posted at 1:22 PM, Tuesday, October 19, 2010 24 notes Tags: NYTimes.com web design information architecture