The British Broadcasting Corporation plans to develop its online presence by providing social networking sites based on its most popular brands such as Top Gear, a BBC spokeswoman said on Thursday.The world-renowned broadcaster is looking to tap into the popularity of such sites as MySpace, in which users contribute comments and video footage to share with other users.
The spokeswoman for BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the corporation, said there was no time plan in place but that it expected to continue to develop its online service over the next year.
The sites will carry more interactive sections and be targeted at consumers who are already interested in such brands as the popular motoring show and BBC Good Food.
And so our predictions in our book are playing out in front of us in real time. A BBC spokesperson said
The teen part of this (trend) might have reached capacity, but there might be other communities that we could explore given the brand and our existing online presence. If appropriate social networking opportunities arise, then we would look at them very seriously, because it's a growing area of business that we're not particularly in at the moment. It seems to be the way that Web sites are developing.
And
A report by consultancy Deloitte this year said traditional organizations such as the BBC and newspapers were in fact ideally suited to benefit, because the trend develops consumer loyalty.
More social networking is about a persistent conversation, its about engagement. That means less push and more pull
BBC Worldwide has a £350m kitty for social networking projects and acquisitions . Oh - and the BBC is thinking of selling TV Centre. Any connection there?OK, so it's a vast organisation, and Worldwide is technically a separate beast, blah-di-blah. But as Matt Wells wrote today, closing TV Centre would signal the end of an era: "symbolising the shift in the balance of power away from media companies towards independent producers and individual consumers".
The internet has empowered those individual consumers of course, and media companies are battling to weigh up which technological tools will help them engage with consumers and help them build new audiences.
The strategy of building community sites around successful brands is not radical, and we'll only see much more of this as broadcasters, publishers, the music industry and just about everyone else work out how to exploit the marketing potential of the social networking trend.
The end of the TV schedule looms large
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