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INTRODUCTION: Modern websites are no longer just endless pages of text, they have evolved to so much more. webpage designers spend hours and an endless amount of creativity to produce a unique webpage. All of their imagination has an end result of a webpage that incorporates ethos, pathos and logos to attract the millions of users online. Each of these websites has an attractive home page, a navigation system that guides the users through the website as painless as possible, and a targeted audience. A website that shows all of these characteristics is www.ebaumsworld.com. AUDIENCE and PURPOSE: The general audience Ebaum has tried to reach out to is anyone who has internet access and has time to kill, but the more specific audience would be adolescent males. This is obvious because of the large amount of advertisement found on Ebaum’s world which targets young men. From electronics to attractive women, all of the advertisement proves that the main audience of Ebaum’s website is young males. Ebaum’s world shares the same purpose as many entertainment websites and does exactly that, entertain. Whether you have five minutes to kill before the next class or your significant other just ended a serious relationship, Ebaum’s world could help get you through it. HOMEPAGE: Ebaum’s World is a website which contains thousands of entertaining files that are accessible to everyone. The home page has a simple but effective format. It showcases the newest multimedia files to hit the internet for all to see. A few months ago, the homepage would only be updated once a week. Now the homepage also displays “daily media” taken from the old media collection for the usual visitors like your’s truely. The homgepage clearly presents the new media files on the right side of the page so anyone could spot it immediately. Each file has a picture which doubles as a link to the file, and next to each file there is a short description of it. The daily media could be seen in the very center of the homepage. Those also have pictures and descriptions. Under the three or four daily media the weekly jokes and links to the weekly pictures are shown. On the left of the daily media is just a column of links that extends to the bottom of the page which is divided up into different categories. The very top of the column has the links of all of the media files in Ebaum’s digital library. The links are classified by the types of files they contain; video, audio, flash animation, etc. Under those links, there are links to forums and chat rooms that connect Ebaum’s fans then there are links to other websites that are either similar to Ebaum’s world or that are sponsoring it. All these little details about ebaum’s homepage all fit into its simple logical design that the frequent visitors can use so easily. NAVIAGTION: The navigation of ebaum’s world is very straightforward. First, the files are first divided up by categories, which was stated earlier, but because there are so many files in Ebaum’s media library, there categories are divided up into sub-categories. For example, when a user clicks on the video link on the homepage, the link takes him to a page with four sub-categories which includes; Hilarious videos, extreme videos, cool videos and sports videos. The name of the sub-categories all describes what could be found within them. which helps terminate confusion. This system is applied to all the rest of the media formats. LOGOS: The logic behind Ebaum’s world is very subtle and could only be noticed if observed closely. The links are organized, the tabs are well thought out and strategically placed and finally, the new media are publicized so it would be the first thing anyone who visits the site to see. The sub-category system works out very well for the format and the navigation of the whole site. This all adds together and makes Ebaum’s world easy enough of an elementary computer user to explore. PATHOS: A website that contains so many entertaining files does not need to work much on pathos; every enjoyable media file does that on its own but regardless, ebaum tries his best. He establishes the “fan of the month award” where a fan is chosen once a mouth from thousands of other fans to have a picture on the homepage for a week. Another way ebaum tries to appeal to the emotions of his users is by encouraging hate mail. Ebaum knows not all of the reactions to his website are positive, so by letting hate mail go to him through an organized inbox, he lets his users express there negative opinions and at the same time, helps him keep it from getting to his work. Another thing that Ebaum encourages is sending in raw footage of funny videos for cash and a chance to get a web celebrity. This not only motivates users to visit Ebaum’s world more often for more ideas, it also motivate them to have fun and try doing stupid things. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, you have to decide. ETHOS: The ethos of Ebaum’s world all comes from the format of the website and what the site contains. The overall format is simple and likable while the content of the site could not be any better. This only means that Ebaum’s world’s ethos only benefits from everything that is put into it. |