Today's Big Thing

A subsidary of InterActiveCorp, Today's Big Thing catalogues funny or interesting media. Videos and images, hosted and created by third parties, are uploaded, categorised and presented on the website. The gimmick is only one of each category, "Entertainment", "Sports", "Technology", "Music", "Funny Video" "Cute Animals" and "Pictures" are presented daily, with a winner presented on the "Today's Big Thing" frontpage, redirected from the URL.
The videos are embedded, typically in a custom flash player, but sometimes in other formats depending on origin, such as YouTube or CollegeHumour's video player. The video takes centre place in the middle of the page. The video is accompanied by the author and a hyperlink to whatever page the content was taken from. A description is present, though typically this is normally just a joke.  Along with this are a variety of sharing options are available, like a Digg link or the ability to share on facebook. Unlike many competitors no comments section is available. Though this often seen as a disadvantage, it removes the need for forum moderators, prevents "trolls" from making the content adult, losing younger or more conservative viewers and generally fits the minimalistic aesthetic. Below is a list of other day's videos and a search bar is present for older content.
The company make money through advertising, with banners above, below and to the right of the video. The one video/one page design and daily nature of the website means an individual can see many adverts in one sitting of the site. The high amount of integrated sharing capabilities are to attract more viewers, who generate revenue.
The page design is reminiscent of the single serving sites of the 90's in very little unnecessary data is available. However the primary colour scheme and replicated house style across "categories" maintains a professional look and feel and the little touches, such as each category having an individual take on the colour scheme and this being replicated when the cursor hover over them in the nav bar reinforce this image.
Finding a practically limitless audience of internet users from confused new adopters to old pros, TBT provides a service by surfing through the mass of the internet for the gems and making them easily available to anyone.