The Timesonline is the Times newspaper online. It is an extension of the newspaper, but for me is one of the weakest of the UK newspapers online.

As you may be aware, News International are planning to put a paywall on the Timesonline to ask people to subscribe to the news content. This is an interesting idea which has previously been attempted disasterously in America. It will be interesting to see how this experiment pans out.

Times Design:

The website looks fine with the Timesonline moniker on each page and a clear navigation tool from news to sport to culture to business. It is varied and has a decent amount of information, although it is less interesting and informative than many of its rivals. The site looks a bit sparse and it doesn't have the punch of other sites, it looks a bit dull,

Content:

This is the weak area of the website for me, whereas online papers like the Guardian or Dailymail or Telegraph have a mix of stories, blogs and online reports, the Timesonline seems to be less interested in this. Perhaps they are saving the real content for the subscribers but I am not impressed enough to pay for this over more extensive sites like the Guardian.

My View:

As a big sports fan I generally read the online papers for their sports content, however I don't really think the Timesonline is a good example of this. It has stories but not much beyond it, whereas the Guardian has a lot more interesting comment and blogs and really gets beyond the news. Perhaps i'm biased but I find the times website a tad twee and many of their articles are a bit dull or facile, as an example today articles include 'How to show your legs after winter' and 'why we're all eating full english breakfasts'. Neither is relevant or interesting to me, while I accept I chose these for that reason, I like to read informed comment on events and find the Times view of 'less is more' not interesting enough making it about fifth choice as an online newspaper resource for me.

I won't be paying to subscribe as I don't feel I need to with other better resources on offer. Overall its a reasonable site that will appeal to certain people a great deal, unfortunately i'm not one of them.