Links on RTE!

While examining the use of links on the Internet, I chose to focus on the RTE news website. As the name suggests, their main objective is to deliver up-to-the-minute news to their users. While exploring the site, I noticed a distinct lack of links, particularly in direct comparison to sites such as Wikipedia.

When you enter the news sub-section of the website, the most prominent news stories appear. You see a snippet of the story and must click on it in order to see the remainder of the story. Throughout the story, no in-text links appear. When you reach the end of the story, no external links occur either.

Although there is a great scarcity of links, some links do appear, in the form of out-of-text links. Over to the right hand side of the page, it is possible to access both the top stories and the most popular stories in the categories of ‘news‘, ‘sport‘, ‘entertainment‘ and ‘business‘. Obviously, these links are internal to the RTE site.

In addition, there are other links contained on the page. Included in the border at the top of the page, there are three links. ‘PDA edition‘ is a link that allows the user to view the site in PDA version. ‘RTE Extra‘ is a link that allows the user to access different services on RTE, including text alerts and mobile TV. Finally, the ‘A-Z‘ link provides the user with a full A-Z glossary of the site.

In conclusion, although RTE news website contains very little links in comparison to such sites as Wikipedia, the links they do have are very effective.