BBC Online - part three

Part I here, Part II here.

As I promised earlier, this third post will focus on "what trends in the Internet industry are relevant to the BBC?". For a major content player such as the BBC, most of what is going on will in some way be relevant, but ultimately the key trends are:

1. Content is becoming the basis of a web development platform.
2. Ordinary users are generating more content, through social networks and self-publishing tools such as blogs and Flickr.
3. Audio and video content continues to more digitized and more online through podcasts, iTunes and the growing number of online television episodes.

Content is becoming the basis of a web development platform.

The recent web 2.0 transformation of Google Maps would be nothing without the other half of the equation, namely the content that is being overlaid onto the maps. This is the same for Amazon's use of its catalogue, Yahoo Music Unlimited and the photos in Flickr. The BBC has plenty of content, including the types most requested when Zawodny asked his readers what APIs they wanted - sports and finance.

We are at the very early days of web 2.0, which means that what we see taking place now will change and mature rapidly. On the other hand, even in the early days of email and messenger and Netscape, things looked pretty much the same as they do now. So we can assume that the current craze for map-based applications will continue and will grow in popularity and, more importantly, user adoption.

This is a very good setting for the BBC, both in the UK, which will remain its core market for a good long while, and abroad, where the BBC has a feet-on-the-ground network that few other companies can match. You can imagine seeing the football results appear around the UK, we already have map-based traffic reports and heaven help us control our excitement at the possible permutations of what developers could do with the live election results every four years.

Maps will not be the only setting for web 2.0 services - I mention those primarily because I am not imaginative enough to see what else is down the road. But many of these services will be based on sports, finance, news and traffic information. The BBC does have major gaps - for example, it does not have data for ecommerce (in particular, price comparison), travel bookings, real estate and the text inside books (it would be interesting to find out how much of the BBC's video and radio archives are also transcribed to text). However, the BBC's role is not to provide developers with all the data they need for their growth, but to provide BBC data with all the developers it needs for its growth.

The BBC does not have to provide APIs into its content, or indeed any other way for developers to make use of it. For a start, the competitive pressure to do so is limited - even Yahoo has yet to open up its finance and sports data (the delay may be due to issues with the content owners, since Yahoo is largely a distributor, but the BBC has similar problems). User pressure is limited since we in the UK, sophisticated as we may think we are, still lag the US, where this is a pretty new phenomenon.

In fact, for the BBC, opening up its archives will mean allowing developers around the world to make use of BBC content, and this can only add to the controversy for an organization funded by UK taxpayers (may I take this opportunity to suggest to the BBC that many people would prefer that instead of paying, say, a tenner of the licence to fund the website, we get ten pounds worth of "this page today was brought to you by James" sponsorship opportunities). Additionally, the BBC like any content provider, and especially one for whom video and audio are the bulk of its output, will always have legitimate concerns about opening up completely.

If the BBC is under no pressure to enter the web 2.0 world, and to do so brings a number of problems, why is it going there? The most likely answer, improbable as it seems, is that here is a major broadcaster that "gets" the value of web 2.0 and is being proactive about it. That in itself demands a lot of respect. En route, there will be ongoing debates about the BBC's misuse of its funding, there will be calls for faster progress, and there will be complaints about whatever restrictions the BBC places on use of its content. But for users, and particularly users outside the UK, any steps by the BBC in this direction should be treasured as a rare example of a large traditional media company that broadly speaking is on the side of web 2.0.

Ordinary users are generating more content, through social networks and self-publishing tools such as blogs and Flickr.

There are two main aspects of the user-centric web (it's always "me, me, me", isn't it) - one is the creation of content by users, of which blogs and podcasts are the most recent incarnation, and the other is the growth of social networks. MySpace is probably the best example of combining these two aspects together. MySpace users are socially networked (whatever does it mean?) with each other, and also committed to building content-rich homepages for themselves. The BBC is very aware that most of its audience, regardless of whether they publish online or not, have a lot of content, in the forms of mobile photos, and soon mobile videos. The BBC has a mixed track record of managing the user-centric web, more of which in part four. Whether it knows what to about it or not, the BBC realizes that it needs to do something to channel this content and user goodwill into itself.

Audio and video content continues to more digitized and more online through podcasts, iTunes and the growing number of online television episodes.

Digitization of content, like so much else online, is a vague concept and also one that is new, but not new. Video on demand continues to make its way from dream to reality, this year with a focus on showing TV episodes online, for example by Yahoo. AOL added built another yard of the road with its much-praised live showing of the Live8 concert. Google continues its attempts to digitize the world's books. Some websites, such as that of Comedy Central, are built solidly around the availability of online video. Some, notably sports, still have a big hole in their video availability, largely due to rights issues. And there is always the spectre of "video kazaa". The BBC has hopefully modelled the impact of the various aspects of this trend. A lot of its programming is less likely to be stolen than that of, say, a movie studio (the demand for yesterday's morning chat shows is limited), but on the other hand, the relatively small size of the files of its major series episodes make them more likely to be stolen (sorry, "shared"). The future of digitized content is a nebulous affair, but one way or the other it will affect the BBC, so the BBC needs to have a response.

I would also point readers to this article. The author has not properly developed his point, but it sounds like there could be something to it.

(As I write part three, I am beginning to overlap onto the as yet unwritten parts four and five, but never you mind about that).