eaders of SB Nation sites such as Mile High Hockey, Pats Pulpit, and Podium Cafe will have seen by now that they have all undergone major redesigns as part of the SB Nation United campaign. I personally feel the redesign fails on a key point: usability. Blogs that were once tight and flexible are now stunning and cumbersome. Simple features like the ability to scan for new content using the navbar have disappeared, replaced by popups that now ignore the unofficial contributions (i.e. content submitted by readers - the key ingredient separating the platform from other blogging platforms).
Additionally, SB Nation appears to have shoe-horned itself further onto the pages of its blogs, with articles and videos that, whether interesting or not, have no actual connection with the blogs (ostensibly, the assumption is that anything about sports counts as related content). In fact, judging by how much space SB Nation's own content takes compared with the fanshots and fanposts sidebars, one would think officially-sanctioned content has taken precedent over the people responsible for keeping the platform afloat. Of course, this is not the case for many of the blog editors. David Driscoll-Carignan, in the original version of this article, said, "I’m not a huge fan of the changes to fanshots and especially fanposts."
Ultimately, for everyone involved, it's a case of eating the gruel you're given, and heaping on enough salt to give it some flavour.
In the below image, you can view a comparison of Mile High Hockey's content contributors, and just how lowly regular members have become in the SB Nation hierarchy. You can view a larger version here (please note that the size is 974 x 10602).
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