This week we have been exploringhow the top Olympic sponsors having been benefiting from their advertising budget. As a change of pace, today we’ll be looking at how Moreover Technologies is powering coverage of the Olympics through the BBC website.
The British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) has some of the best Olympic coverage in the world and Moreover Technologies, Newsdesk and Search Engine Toolkit, help provide value to the BBC visitors.
There are 3 levels of Olympic coverage offered through the BBC website:
Countries
Every country has their own news page, listing key facts, records, medal counts, and more. The “Around the Web” news is powered by Moreover and is a part of every country’s page.
Just like countries, each sport being showcased in the Olympics has its own dedicated page. Moreover’s tools allow the “Around the Web” section to be populated with relevant news with minimal manual intervention.
Top individual Olympians also have their own pages supported by Moreover’s news. Hundreds of pages at www.BBC.co.uk showcase how information can be automatically displayed using a robust taxonomy to create value for visitors.
Here is a nifty little graphic (click-through to see it in all its glory) from the BBC/Nielsen illustrating the ever-changing landscape of various social media platforms across the globe.
The rise and rise of Facebook seems to be the big story here, with the social network now being home to over half a billion active users, including almost half of the UK population! Obviously the recent privacy concerns and quit campaigns haven’t hurt the site particularly (I wonder if the forthcoming movie will..) but how long do you think Facebook can stay as the planet’s favourite social network?
Great article here from paidContent:UK analysing where UK newspaper websites get their traffic from, and coming in at number five, in terms of driving traffic, is the BBC with its Moreover-powered Newstracker service.
The figures look even more favourable for Moreover/the Beeb when you look exclusively at the UK numbers, putting search engines aside the BBC becomes the number one referring site for the British press driving over 1.2 million UK clicks in April of this year.
With the BBC determined to continue this trend, becoming a “window on the Web” and see its rate of referring click-throughs double by 2012, this is a great example of how aggregators like Moreover can work with and serve the publishers for a common good.
The BBC World Service director, Peter Horrocks, has spoken on how social media and news are becoming ever inter-linked and how the two forms of media can compliment each other. This comes after the Beeb has told journalists to make use of social media, holding the view that the new forms of technology are changing the way journalism operates.
Horrocks describes social media as a vital source of a opinions and voices, along with the credibility that audience driven content brings with it. And with that brings a new understanding and appreciation of social media for the BBC, who just last year remained cautious over its use.
It is great to see a leading news outlet as the BBC embrace social media in such a way, following in the footsteps of CNN who during a recent site redesign have also tightly integrated user-generated content into their news content.
We touched upon it last month with a blog post about plans from the BBC to revamp its news website. Today’s MediaGuardian has an update on that story with more information on Auntie’s intent for the new-look site.
Antony Rose, controller of Vision and Online at the BBC, has hinted that social media will have a role to play in the future of the BBC’s websites and they are keen to research “what the next generation in social media will be”.
The links between news and social media are certainly intriguing, this move by the BBC could be quite innovative in this particular space. As a leading of both news and social media monitoring solutions we’ll be keen to see how this move from the BBC develops and look forward to further diversification from the Beeb.
Last week’s BBC Open Day saw the Beeb reaffirm its commitment to the link economy and, in the process, keep driving traffic to many of the publicly funded corporation’s fiercest critics. The clickthrough numbers look pretty impressive, rising from 10 million per week in February to 12 million today – in part powered by the BBC’s partnership with Moreover, and these stats should only increase as Auntie pushes more outbound linking.
Also on the agenda was the BBC’s plans to refresh its BBC News website ahead of an expected UK General Election next spring, this “spring clean” looking to improve layout and navigation rather than introducing any new editorial content. The BBC Sport website can also expect a similar makeover as the corporation readies itself for next year’s World Cup and intends to maximise the newly acquired Football League online rights.
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