New El Tiempo website

Colombia's main newspaper got a completely different look today. El Tiempo dropped the old hosting and went with a new format that seems designed to match blogs and other leading world newspapers. It actually reminds me a lot of Argentina's Clarin without all the ads.

They have activated comments on articles. Comments can be voted up or down by readers.

They have a "most read" and "most active search" section on the homepage. It looks like they may incorporate tags next.

Podcasts and videocasts.

They've created widgets that can be downloaded onto your computer or run on your Google homepage or MyYahoo. These widgets allow you to view sections of El Tiempo without logging in. This goes on top of their RSS feeds, which they've had for a while.

They have added breaking news via cell phone SMS.

They are allowing people to create and host blogs on their site. This is probably the most significant news. By allowing users to blog and placing some of those blog posts on the front page, they have taken a major leap towards integrating consumer generated content with their traditional journalism.

Overall, El Tiempo may just have leapt ahead not just most Latin American newspapers, but most newspapers around the globe in terms of integrating into the new media environment.

UPDATE: Looks like their servers are running slow. I think they might be surprised by the level of traffic to the site and the amount of bandwidth the new features take.