Trying something new? Zoomer.de launched.
«The first real internet news site» is here, former news anchorman and now publisher of Zoomer Ulrich Wickert says in a video advertorial. The german publishing house Holtzbrinck launched Zoomer a few minutes ago, targeting at young users. It’s an ambitious project, with joint forces of the staff of the last year discontinued Business News and the online department of the Berlin based Tagesspiegel.
The new site is meant to be new in several ways, especially in terms of user participation. But right now, there’s not much to see on that: you got to know that it’s the average of editorial and user voting which gives a news item it’s place on the front page.
Noticeable: a lot of flash toys, and captchas appear as soon as you try to interact with the site. Another eye catching feature is the personalization login.
In a more journalistic view, the site looks quite lurid to me («Attempted Murder?», «Mother drown baby in bath tube») and show oriented - football, pop culture…
You should take a closer look at the footer section, since there are many publications of Holtzbrinck Group named, which texts now could appear on Zoomer, too. But golem.de is missing, a german tech ticker which belongs to Holtzbrinck eLab at the moment. Unlike the Lausitzer Rundschau, which fits to the target group just like Ulli Wickert: the man who retired from TV news some year ago could be the grandfather of the young targeted group.
(Disclaimer: Right now I’m employed by a company which is part of the Holtzbrinck Group, too)