Round up: Thursday 27 January 2011
Post categories: BBC Online
| 18:57 UK time, Thursday, 27 January 2011
paidContent has an audio interview with Erik Huggers about the changes to BBC Online: "BBC's Outgoing Huggers Says Cuts Fix A Bloated Website"
Now that the dust has settled it's time for some considered analysis:
Emily Bell(wether): "We're All Mark Thompson Now"
At its worst, the BBC's online presence was a reflection of its confused core. All things to everyone all the time. Nobody seemed to understand the concept of 'no white space on the web', well plenty did, but not those handing out editorial permissions to start sites as it was 'only the web'. If you could have actually seen the output of this labour, if it were made physical, the corridors of White City would be impassable with irrelevant content clutter.
From paidContent: "In BBC's Age Of Austerity, Algorithms Are Axeman's Best Friend"
It's these which are the emblematic measures, signifying the end of an era in which online was considered the BBC's "third medium" after TV and radio... BBC Online is now a highly popular mainstream medium in its own right - but one which, save for a few key services, is part and parcel of the broadcast experience.
GigaOm is optimistic: "How BBC Online Cuts Can Push it into the 21st Century"
A significant portion of BBC web output is boosted simply because it's from the BBC, not because of its innate quality. When services are genuinely good, the public latches on. And those successful areas are largely unaffected by these cuts: the details announced today have barely any impact on BBC News... they also don't really hurt the corporation's biggest success story of recent years, the iPlayer...
The changes got support from a surprising quarter. Classical music blogger Pliable who is (as always) On An Overgrown Path: "Beware of cut and paste culture"
Every BBC website has been reviewed using the three criteria of meeting public purpose, meeting editorial priorities and distinctiveness... It is this focus on distinctiveness... which should be sending a message far beyond Broadcasting House.
853 was unimpressed with plans to cut the BBC's TLDs: "Pulling the plug on the BBC's internet history"
The BBC should be shouting about its role in creating the British web, not sweeping this history under the carpet for fear of offending ideologically-obsessed blowhards.
Daniel Danker's further explanation of what's planned for BBC Radio didn't satisfy eveybody including James Cridland ("The BBC's "new radio product": birtspeak translation") and Adam Bowie ("The BBC and Marketing Speak").
The announcement about H2G2 has been picked up by Slashdot, boing boing, The Register, and Thinking About It who attempts to describe H2G2:
But whenever I try to say more I just end up saying what it isn't... It's not even primarily a social network though it predates just about all of the ones still standing, and it's not "a small town in cyberspace" though that is how I've described it for years.
And finally over at Radio 4 they're doing some "curating".
Nick Reynolds is Social Media Executive, BBC Online
Comment number 1.
At 12:15 28th Jan 2011, OfficerDibble wrote:Hi Nick,
All other blogs have been closed so maybe this is the most appropriate place to respond to a comment you made today:
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Comment number 2.
At 12:18 28th Jan 2011, OfficerDibble wrote:ah.. my post had been sliced in half. Is this another bug?
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Comment number 3.
At 12:26 28th Jan 2011, OfficerDibble wrote:Maybe two backpointing arrows is not allowed and that deleted my text?... but it allowed me to Post Comment" without warning. very frustrating as I'll have to compose my post again.
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Comment number 4.
At 14:14 28th Jan 2011, Green Soap wrote:All this extermination plan has done so far, is promoted commercial entities Twitter and Facebook even more.
Why even have a Social Media BBC department if it's been outsourced already?
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