The Bloomberg page is full of pointless and distracting names fading in as you scroll. The name rollover effects on the Grantland page are carefully designed to keep the content uncluttered, not just to be cool; I just noticed there’s supposed to be a similar effect on the Bloomberg page, except it only works when the name itself is rolled over instead of the whole box, the avatars aren’t as stylish or consistent, and some of the the sub-descriptions are too long and spill out of their space.
The overall typography and layout of the Grantland page is better designed; in pretty much every detail where they differ, the Grantland page is done more carefully and with more obvious adherence to a design vision. (As one trivial example, the Bloomberg article uses a mix of straight and curly quotation marks for no apparent reason.)
I’d say Bloomberg’s designers copied the idea and several specific elements from the Grantland page (or another similar one), but ultimately either had shittier design constraints imposed from outside, did a rushed job, or just overall weren’t as skilled or tasteful.
