God I thought I was the only one who hates this. Buzzfeed itself it an absolutely shite pretentious site. Annoyed how the DS frontpage is copying that stupidity.

All those subjective top 10 articles and dumb gifs. No thanks.

Don't forget the ..

"You won't believe what so and so from so and so looks like now!" ..

HAD to bump this again...seriously ENOUGH already DS!!! Why spoil DS in this way? Constantly throwing in unfunny comments in brackets and gifs. It's getting progressively worse. Why can't it just report on the soaps and write any articles/news pieces normally and not like over obsessed teenagers? Half of it reads like fanfiction.

I've pretty much lost all patience after having just seen a Saved By The Bell gif in a "news" piece about a Neighbours actor from the 90s sharing a throwback pic from the past. And this is news, why?????

I can understand a layout change for the site, but the content has been massacred completely by the brains behind DS.

It's awful, isn't it? Managing to spin out an article of drivel based on a few people tweeting.

"14 ways in which Digital Spy has been ruined. And you won't believe what number 8 is."

I’ve read Digital Spy since the Neil Willkes days and it’s certainly changed, maybe it has to in order to survive. For me it’s not the content that’s the problem, most of it isn’t for me but then a lot of stuff in the world isn’t for me these days. It’s the terribly tacky way it’s presented. I believe it's what is referred to these days as "house style".

The headlines “DANNY DYER IN FIGHT SHOCKER” followed by the cringe inducing sub headlines “AND WE’RE TOTALLY NOT OVER IT”

The “Everything You Need to Knows” that don’t tell me everything I need to know. There's one on the front page now.

“THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 7: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW”
“Who did Negan Kill?”

Read it. Still don’t know.

The last three paragraphs of every article being vague links to other articles.

And then the most annoying things, the Twitter reacts articles.

They embed a tweet
@DannyDyer “I had a fight me”

Then underneath it type the tweet out.
“I had a fight me” tweeted Dyer

I know I’ve seen it, it's right above your sentence.

“Digital Spy hires ex-Heat editor in battle with BuzzFeed and Mashable”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...-julian-linley

Now *that’s* everything you need to know.

It's getting progressively worse and worse. The ones that really annoy me though are the one that are like 'Thingy and Thingy talk about THAT kiss' or something like that where they capitalise 'That' or another similar word and it ends up being something that really is not iconic or important enough for even fans to understand what they are alluding to simply from a capitalised 'THAT'. Such bad writing.

Like many others I don't bother with the DS main site anymore, it's a complete and utter waste of my time. The soaps section in particular is total garbage now. DS used to be a daily staple for me, and I'd happily click around other areas of the site and pick up things that had been written.

The first annoyance was the major overhaul the website had however long ago, but the change in editorial style since then have been the death blow for me. I really don't give a toss about 'feels' and other such rubbish.

Yep the site is awful. It's like its being written by Year 9 media studies pupils.

The gifs, the emojis, the twitter reacts' articles are all awful.

And don't get me started on the unfunny sub headings.

For example, instead of "Eastenders announce new producer" it's "You'll never guess who Enders new boss is! We're, like, totes shocked ".

Stfu. It's insufferable.

There seems to be a new clickbait article based on a few tweets after every ep of EE now.

The Twitter reacts type stuff has been doing the rounds for a while but I don't remember it being as frequent as after every single episode. They try to sell these things as the typical view as well when usually they've only quoted 3 or 4 tweets.

It's not just DS, Metro and some of the tabloid news sites start it then they all jump on the bandwagon, copying each other.

Another bugbear of mine is those 'this is what a former soap star looks like now' type articles. Often they don't look that different to how they did before and in some cases the actor has been on TV recently in other things.

Edit: It seems I have ranted already about the 'this is what so and so looks like now' articles in this thread http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...9&postcount=75

That's the exact problem. All online sites like this only have one measure of "success" - how many clicks. Not great journalism, or scoops, or quality, just number of clicks. That's how they get advertising - by getting more clicks. So they serve up dumb instant reaction rehashed repetitive populist shit - to get more clicks.

It's a plague that's undermined pretty much all online journalism. I guess when Hearst took it over, that's the style they insisted on.

I guess it's aimed at someone, but I don't know who. A celeb-obsessed 13 year old fangirl/fanboy? But it's not me, so I stopped using it.

The layout is awful, old DS was far better and easy to navigate. Now most of the news like the OP mentioned are the buzzfeed type articles and there was a time when they were obsessed with Danny Dyer, I'm surprised they never released an article about him taking a shit and how they are not over it.

I think that's an insult to 13 year olds

In my view it's aimed at facebook-addicted women aged 25 - 40 who love X Factor.

It is actually! I hate the idea that young people are actually expected to be thick - they're not, in my experience.

I equally hate the idea that it's young women who suck up this celebrity crap, but it might be true. I really don't know who it's for. Maybe they just do it because they think they're meant to. It's a mystery.

What I also don't get is that the soaps page seems to lag behind what's happening on the DS 'front page'.

For instance, news of Marc Anwar's sacking as Corrie's Sharif is on the front page, but appears nowhere on the soaps page, when it's clearly today's main soap story?

The soaps page seems to take a day or two to catch up with the front page.

If I see the phrase "throwing shade" one more time I won't be responsible!

The lingo they're using on the main website is embarrassing.

What also irritates me (as well as the above) is that the links at the bottom of articles are often incredibly old! You read a 'new' story from the site and the videos/articles linked on the bottom are often months old so not so user friendly to 'click' through.

They need to get rid of 'Guess what ex soap actor looks like now' or '10 weirdest sls' personally I'm not interested in that, I want soap news

They're going gif crazy at the moment as well.

Haha I could literally not agree more. DS used to be a place where you got a no-frills round-up of entertainment news from various sources, along with exclusives and the best soap spoilers on the market. I left feedback in the survey when the new site was launched a while ago and I put something like "Please, you're not mashable. You're not buzzfeed." Obviously everyone else must have said Oooh i'm loving it its just like mashable and buzzfeed! As they have done everything in their power to become a cheap knock-off of the aforementioned sites.

The homepage is littered with gifs (so many that it sometimes crashes my second generation ipad). Almost every so-called 'article' is a click-bait title designed to shock with very little content inside. It seems as though DS has gone on a 6-week content/digital marketing course and followed every tip given to them, trading in their integrity in exchange for advertising revenue. The tactics they are using might have increased traffic, it might have increased 'audience engagement', it might have increased the number of clicks on adverts. The one thing it won't give them though is respect in the industry or a loyal readership. That's the choice they've made I guess!!!!!!!

It doesn't bother me that much. I just assume this is what they need to do to compete in an online landscape where Buzzfeed and the Mail Online are undisputed kings. They do need to work on producing more serious/in-depth reads in between all the clickbaity articles, though. I thought the EE article the other day about the new direction of the show was a step in the right direction (this one here: http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/east...-sean-oconnor/) but articles like this are too few and far between. If they can get the balance right between getting their clicks up and keeping more serious soap fans happy, I think they'd be onto a winner.

They got good use out of Mary Berry gifs when Bake-off move to C4 news was annouced

I agree, there used to be more content for serious/avid fans of tv shows, soaps etc. That's what I liked about it - it was for us nerds *cries at the memories*

There can only be one reason sites do more and more of this stuff - because people read it more.

Have they done away with the :BREAKING!' red headlines that would sometimes appear at the top of the page, and link to the story?