BBC to relaunch websites with focus on social media / (Sep 30)
It’s a sign of the times – the BBC have announced a radical relaunch of its website to include more social media.
BBC sources have told MediaGuardian that the new-look site will launch by March.
As soon as this weekend the BBC could add social media applications to its Strictly Come Dancing online coverage.
Anthony Rose, the BBC’s controller of Vision and Online, declined to reveal specific details last night at the launch of this year’s MediaGuardian Innovation Awards.
But he did say that social media will play a big part in the relaunch of the BBC’s family of websites. He explained that the BBC is not only working on a new homepage and the underlying hosting platform, but his team is currently researching “what the next generation in social media will be”.
He confirmed that the BBC is planning several innovations to the site: “Among them for example, is the plan to enable users to comment on particular moments while watching and see what other users said about the same moment or simply rate moments with ‘Boo!’, ‘Good!’ or ‘Gosh!’.”
The BBC is planning radical changes in the the navigation design of its news sites. As was pointed out at a recent BBC open day, the news site – which attracts 10 million users a week – needs to underline the fact that it is breaking news. Many users don’t recognise that the BBC is producing 500 stories a day as well as a lot of local content; the relaunch aims help them find this information more easily.
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