Improving the 'user journey' and a spring web relaunch - next stops on the Sky News innovation cycle

Going forward is the new standing still. That's the impression you get talking to Sky News networked media editor Steve Bennedik about his desire to see the publisher/broadcaster at 'the vanguard of innovation'.

In recent weeks Sky has designed Facebook applications, developed a iPhone-friendly mobile interface, called for Second Life citizen journalism volunteers, released a Windows Vista gadget, used social media to experiment with new reporting forms, rolled out technology to enhance online news stories with map-based navigation - and more besides.

Like the majority of large news providers, Sky News now has the imperative, said Bennedik, of constantly looking for new ways to getting its news viewed, read and listened to, across a range of platforms.

"It's increasingly important to let people invite you into their world, so many people are spending so much time on social networking, if you can enter that world you can become part of that group, that will become increasingly important," he told journalism.co.uk.

"To have a news application that works on Facebook, it doesn't necessarily take us a lot of time to do... it's those sort of things that will become increasingly important to major players in the future."

The zenith, he added, would be to find a 'transferable commodity' that made it easy to spread news content seamlessly across social networks on sites like Facebook and MySpace or from mobile to PC to television.

Yet, for the time being, the constant developmental stream of widgets, other technological tweaks and smaller applications, he said, will run in tandem with work on bigger, more fundamental changes.

And the next big fundamental project? Sky News will relaunch in the spring, he said, with a video-rich site, much more citizen journalism and a better 'user journey', through improved use of tagging and linking of content.

A recent fact finding trip to the US, he added, left him convinced of the need not to be 'so protectionist' and to open up the news process more by using technology better to engage the citizen in the process, tapping into community knowledge and using it in relevant and enlightening ways.

It's something Sky was planning to do for the general election, before Gordon Brown put those plans on ice.

It's a project, he added, that Sky would be looking to apply in some context over the course of the next year.

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