What’s Not On Winnipeg

The Winnipeg Free Press is proudly trumpeting its newest web site – What’s On Winnipeg. Having perused it, I am having difficulty establishing what the site is attempting to achieve. The ads would suggest that this is the ‘Peg’s hottest new social calendar – one can quickly and conveniently find all of the city’s happenings and goings-on.

There is a disconnect between what the ads purport the site to be about and what content actually can be found online. For example, one would erroneously assume that the Food & Drink section is about the plethora of amazing restaurants that grace our city and outlying areas. The lead story in this section oddly features suggestions on how to fill out your spice rack. How this helps me come up with new restaurant ideas is beyond me.

What’s On also reads more like a newspaper than a website. The movies section does give you a list of the week’s top films but only if you go to the pains of scrolling down to find it. Forest Whitaker fans, however, will rejoice in the fact that his picture currently takes up almost the whole initial load screen. The lazier surfers among us will think they happened upon a pictorial gallery.

With all of the fanfare surrounding Winnipeg’s newest social website, I was expecting the second coming of My Winnipeg (before MTS meddling effectively killed its appeal). What we have instead is a newspaper’s version of the social calendar – long on content, short on convenience. What’s On is essentially the Winnipeg Free Press’ online site with prettier pictures and slower loading times.

While the folks at Where Winnipeg must have been a bit worried pre-launch, I can’t help but think they are breathing a little easier these days…



Motivational Tunes:
David Bowie – Look Back in Anger
Blue Man Group – Opening Mandelbrot
Nine Inch Nails – Ruiner (rejected trance mix)