I’ve poked around with Daylife.com some more (my first impressions are here) and have found that the more I poked, the more I’ve liked. I think I know why some people have reacted negatively to it: Daylife is built inside out.

If you want to see what’s very cool about Daylife, skip the front page (the cover story) and the second page (the list of ten top stories) and go straight to a topic page. Let’s say the headline “Critics say surge is more of the same” on the list of top stories strikes your fancy. Click on it. Now you’re at a page about that story. It’s got a snippet from the story, a big pull quote, photos, and related news stories. It’s a busy page and it doesn’t do exactly what I’d like: Show me lots and lots of articles on the same topic. But we’re still not at a topic page. To get there, click on the photo labeled Nouri al-Maliki. Now we’re on a topic page, this one devoted to the prime minister of Iraq. It’s got a whole bunch of stuff to look at, attractively laid out, including snippets from the news wires; articles from today, from this week, from this month; a photo gallery; a quotation; a chart of mentions in blogs and the press; and a list of linked people, places and organizations. What’s not here: An explanation of who Nouri al-Maliki is, a biography, a link to an article about the structure of the Iraqi government, etc. Right now, DayLife is a news site that aims at giving context through links, but the context for news isn’t only more news. A lot of this could be fixed by sucking in (and of course linking out to) Wikipedia content.

But, keep clicking because DayLife gets more interesting the more you click. So, click on one of the linked people. (First, click on the “see the connection” link to see why that person is on al-Maliki’s page.) Let’s try Jalal Talabani. Now we’re on Talabani’s topic page. It’s laid out the same as al-Maliki’s, yet now, for the first time, you (well, I) get a sense of what DayLife is really up to. I can browse in any direction and be certain I’m going to get relevant stuff. The homogeneity of the topic pages means that you don’t have to learn many ropes to swing through the vines.

But there’s more. The topic pages default to the “overview” tab. Instead, click on the “Players” tab. This takes you to a much less finished page that lists people, organizations and places somehow related to Talabani. Simple, but a useful way to browse. (Nit: The pages the tabs lead to lose the tab widget; instead they have a link taking you back to the overview page. The tabs ought to stay in place. That’s why they’re tabs. Ok, DayLife prominently declares itself to be in beta.) That’s what makes DayLife’s pulse pound: Lots of ways to browse.

So, here are my suggestions to DayLife:

1. Right now, because the site takes you to the cover page, and from there to the top ten, it looks like a news aggregator. But it’s weak as an aggregator, at least so far. It doesn’t show you enough news, the news doesn’t update frequently enough, it doesn’t let the user customize it to her interests. For a quick gulp of what’s new, I’m not switching from Google News. Instead, DayLife should aim at enticing us to the topic pages. That’s where the real value is, imo. One way to get us there is to show us a big gulp of the news right off, and quickly get us to the topic pages by featuring their presence. And then get us to come back (well, sort of) by giving us topic feeds, or at least topic alerts.

2. Enhance the topic pages. They’re off to a good start, but they need more than news. We want to understand the news, and for that we need static background materials. And discussion pages so we can educate one another. (Nit: The topic pages about places could also use some maps.)

3. I’m surprised, given the site’s pedigree, how little user contribution is allowed. Not only is there no commenting or tagging, blogs seem to play a small role in the content presented on the site. I don’t understand that. (Conspiracy theory: Is DayLife looking to be acquired by the NY Times, whose topic pages DayLife handily beats in terms of intertwingularity?)

4. We need more of an ability to customize the site. Let us choose a front page that matches our interests; I still think that the best aggregators will let us filter our news through a social network. We should also be able to save topics to “my world” (in addition to the stories, searches, photos, people, places and organizations you can already save); saved searches would let us hack this if there were an advanced mode that let us mash up various types of searched-for objects. Etc.

As it stands, there’s a powerful engine of miscellany running under Daylife. It’s buried inside a front end that, while appealingly presented, doesn’t expose the site’s real utility and power. It should go inside-out, the way Clark Kent does when he’s at his best.

File this under “It’s easy for me to say.”

[Tags: daylife news media everything_is_miscellaneous it’s_easy_for_me_to_say]

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