I love reading CNN for news as it has the most updated articles and good reporters. They spend way too much time reporting on Britney Spears and other Hollywood starlets, but that is not the focus of this post. Instead of trying to bait web surfers into pop culture they take a giant leap backwards in usability and web functionality.
Today I saw an article on CNNmoney.com reprinted from prnewswire that was informative and well written. However all the real information was hidden in non clickable external links. Yes this major website keeps you from accessing external information by purposefully disabling hyperlinks. This is not how the web was won, and if CNN is worried about sharing information they could nofollow the external links to retain usability.
Here is CNN’s link notice:
http://w ww.go7now.com/nb/0123Y (Note: You may have to copy this link into your browser then press the [ENTER] key.)
WTF CNN this is a huge disservice to your users. All I wanted to do was view the content from the Seven Summits strategic investment fund and you put up as many barriers to entry as possible. This is not a way to inspire user confidence and trust.
You can view the CNN newsfeed here and see the glory of unusable links.
