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BBCi to showcase user's content

Posted: 27/10/06 By: Oliver Luft

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The head of BBC News Interactive told a newspaper industry conference today that the corporation had plans to implement several new online features over the coming year.

Pete Clifton told the World Digital Publishing Conference in London that the BBC planned to dedicate an area of the website to focus solely on content supplied by the readership.

"It's about having a place on the site where you can bring it all together, a 'Your News' place where we can really showcase the best of what we have.

"At the moment it's interspersed in our daily reporting, which is where it should be, but we are getting lots of good pictures, video, off-beat stuff, first-hand accounts and case studies.

"I think we really need to say: 'We are really serious about this.' We need to do a bit more than just arrange it in that way and have a place where we can say: 'This is where it is'," he later told Journalism.co.uk.

He also said plans existed to launch aggregation pages to complement BBC material with appropriate links to alterative news sites, blogs, and the websites of community and official bodies.

Mr Clifton said the service could launch by the middle of next year if - along with all other planned developments - approval was granted.

He added that he also wanted to introduce a wiki in one form or another, enhance the live statistics page to give a country-to-country break down of what the popular stories were, increase the prominence of video on the home page and to encourage more correspondents to follow political editor Nick Robinson's lead and become active bloggers.

He also said he intends to deliver the on-demand strategy for BBC News by the end of the year, which will include an assessment of developments in other parts of the news industry.

"The new editor of the Telegraph came to see the news community in the BBC last week and it was very clear how ambitious they are and how they are gearing up to be a multimedia operation," he said.

"We have enjoyed a very dominant position for a long time in the UK and if more people are coming to the party I think that is a good thing.

"We can look across national papers, other broadcasters, regional newspapers and we can all see the same picture; they are all building up their multimedia and web presence. It's more competition and all the more reason for us to be on top of our form."

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