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I'll admit: from a design standpoint, it looks decent.  Also, in terms of text, all the right words are evident: "Blog," "Podcasts," "Videos," "Our Thoughts/Your Thoughts."  Still, there are reasons to be suspicious about GM's new community site, GMnext.

GMnext is purportedly all about dialogue and buyer feedback, but in launching it, GM seems to have ignored existing sources of information.  The popular Corvette Forum has around 175,000 members, for example, and many other forums are dedicated to different models and brands.  GM could have sent representatives to them instead of starting its own community from scratch.

Looking forward, I'll also note that there's nothing new about the topics "Design," "Tech," and "Green" on GMnext, yet for some reason, having this fresh place to talk is supposed to result in huge changes.

Hopefully my reaction is a case of too much cynicism; few things would be nicer than seeing shipments of small, fast, fuel-efficient, and reliable cars appear on the lots of GM's dealers.  This is just a website's launch, however, and I'm not going to get too optimistic until that happens.