Dmitri Fadeyev wrote a good critique of the recent design trend we see in redesigns of sites like The Next Web, Mashable, and ReadWrite. From Redesign Trend in Tech News Sites: Big, Responsive and Content Heavy:

While I like the style direction, I think these sites are trying a little too hard to work like apps, and in doing so, they surrender the strengths of the plain website, namely: simple, responsive navigation mechanisms. Simple sites don’t lag and don’t have any ambiguous navigation elements. They behave like a page, which, while being a constraint, is not necessarily a bad thing. The new wave of responsive redesigns in tech news sites certainly look good with their nice typography and healthy use of whitespace, but they feel heavy, they don’t feel right in the browser. They look more like apps but the speed and responsiveness of a native app just isn’t there.

I think we’re in a period of enthusiastic over-reaching as more and more content sites discover the power of good typography and responsive design. It’s great to see major sites taking risks and experimenting with this stuff. The enthusiasm is fantastic. But I hope that we’ll eventually get through the flashy phase to reach a maturity level in responsive design where the text can truly speak for itself without relying on fancy gimmicks to draw attention to itself.