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This week Time Warner (TWX) is set to launch its revamped AOL news portal with many changes based upon the way blogs are set up.

There will be more interactive elements like enabling visitors to vote, polling and user-generated news on one of the pages.

"I truly believe that when you go to most news sites, it's a Web 1.0 world," Lewis D'Vorkin, senior vice president of AOL News and Sports, said. "They have rearranged the furniture. We have built new furniture."
 
Some of the online news sites, including AOL, have been experiencing some huge drops in visitors. AOL dropped by 12 percent in May, finishing with 19.1 million visitors. The New York Times (NYT) also dropped in May by 9 percent, ending with 8.3 million.

The new site design includes three vertical column with a definite blog feel. Stories are also pushed down the column as newer ones appear.

Included with mostly news wire feeds in the right column are posts by AOL News Bloggers. In the left column they have news stories submitted by users and stories that readers have voted or commented on.

When it comes down to it, it's really simply a three column blog with the postings in the middle column, and URLs and user-generated stories and input in the other columns.

It does give the site a clean look, and may encourage viewers to hang around longer on the site. when you drop 12 percent of viewers in a month, it does show something had to be done. The only thing I'd mention is May is a month that is notoriously slow in other industries (like retail), and may have had a connection here also.

I do think this is a good move by AOL news with the site being much more intuitive and easy to use. The interactive features added were a must for any media company in the current online news climate.