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The BBC's Internet presence came online ten years ago this past weekend on December 15th, 1997, and for the past few months on the new BBC Internet Blog,company executives have been reminiscing about the last 10 years andprojecting into the future. Yesterday, Group Controller in Future Mediaand Technology Erik Huggers wrote an interesting post on why he left Microsoft for civil service at the BBC.
Why in the world would anyone leave Microsoft, a place where Huggersadmits he "was able to globally engage with the media and entertainmentindustry, the telecoms industry and the consumer electronics industry,"for a stodgy old media company? According to Huggers, it's because theBBC is anything but.
By coincidence, the BBC knocked on the door, andsuddenly it dawned on me that there was probably no better organizationon the planet to truly drive innovation in the digital media spaceacross Web, TV and Mobile.
[Also the] BBC is pioneering what an online presence means forbroadcasters; we are driving interactive TV and have world class mobileservices.
Is the BBC really a better place for innovation than Microsoft? Weonce heard a lot about engineers jumping ship from Micosoft and landingat Google, and now from Google to Facebook.But even though many of them say its about opportunity to work on thenext big thing, we all secretly suspect that it has to do with the kindof stock options they can get. But that the BBC -- which has no stockoptions and is state-owned -- can attract talent away from the world'slargest software companies is telling. That said, something like "whois better at innovation" is nearly impossible to quantify.
One thing is certain, the BBC's latest forays into new markets, likeonline video streaming, have not been very innovative. Case in point,the somewhat disastrous release of their iPlayer catchup serviceearlier this year. When it first launched, it was a Windows-only DRMedmess that only worked with Internet Explorer. It wasn't until October that the BBC began to rectify the situation via a partnership with Adobe.
On the other hand, the BBC's newly unveiled beta start page, which clearly draws inspiration from innovative companies like Pageflakes,also shows the Beeb's willingness to push the envelope and experimentwith unfamiliar products and services, even if their innovation isborrowed.
The comments on the blog post quickly devolved into a discussion ofwhether the BBC should be blogging. One commenter, "Thomas," called theBBC's new blogs a "touchy feely gimmick." "Ken" countered that theblogs at least "encourage open communication, which is a good thing."
Guardian blogger, Jemina Kiss, came to more or less the same conclusion,once which I am inclined to agree with. "We hear precious little fromexecutives other than at well-rehearsed conferences and launches, andeven if blog posts are equally polished at least there's theopportunity to put questions to them," she writes. "Many of the postsare a little stiff, I grant you, but perhaps they will be come a littlemore fluid over time."