Bebo, the UK’s biggest social networking site yesterday announced partnerships with a string of broadcasters, including the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, ITN and CBS, in a move hailed as one of the most significant yet in marrying old and new media.
Traditional broadcasters hope that distributing and marketing their programmes to Bebo’s 40 million users will help them reconnect with the so-called “lost TV generation” of 13 to 24-year-olds who make up the social networking site’s core audience.
It will allow Bebo users to collect and curate clips from BBC programmes such as Doctor Who and EastEnders, behind-the-scenes MTV footage, ITN entertainment news and a host of other items within their own “Personal Video Profile”, displaying them on their homepage and sharing them with friends.
In future, broadcasters are also likely to use Bebo to premiere programmes before they are shown on television in an attempt to build up an early following.
One of their biggest challenges is to cut through the noise of competing channels and get viewers to sample their programmes.
Bebo’s president, Joanna Shields, said the announcement marked a new phase for social networking sites. “We’re revolutionising the way media companies can reach audiences online … particularly the hard-to-reach youth demographic,” she said.
As well as welcoming the world’s biggest media companies, she said the new platform would be open to niche broadcasters, giving them an opportunity to reach Bebo’s millions of users.
A fierce battle is taking place for the eyeballs of elusive younger consumers, who are increasingly turning their backs on traditional media. Advertisers are terrified of no longer being able to reach young audiences, while broadcasters and other traditional media owners are seeing mass audiences eroded.
Bebo, which unveiled a new look yesterday, also vowed to collaborate with broadcasters and independent producers to create more interactive drama and entertainment shows developed especially for the web, following its recent hit Kate Modern.
It claims to be the most popular social networking site in Britain, with 10.9 million users spending an average of 35 to 40 minutes a day on it. Globally, it is third to rivals MySpace, which rose to prominence in the UK thanks to its role in breaking several big music artists, and Facebook, which has an older user base and has been embraced by office workers around the world.
Bebo was founded in 2005 by British-born web entrepreneur Michael Birch with his wife, Xochi, and has steadfastly refused a number of offers to sell to established media players.
The BBC and Channel 4 will initially use the Bebo network to promote their shows using short clips. Because it allows them to embed their own “media players” within the website, they are also likely to show full-length programmes in future.
Andy Duncan, chief executive of Channel 4, said it was “the start of an exciting partnership and the launch pad for future innovations around new formats and existing successful shows”. The broadcaster has already enjoyed some success by heavily promoting youth drama Skins through MySpace.
Shields, a former Google executive, said one of the key differences with Bebo’s offering to broadcasters was that it was not attempting to make any money from their content.
Instead, broadcasters retain control of the rights and can use their own technology, showing their own advertisements around their clips.
The power of online video was first demonstrated by the explosion in popularity of video-sharing site YouTube, much of which was driven by traditional broadcasts being made available illegally, as well as from user-generated content.
While some broadcasters, including the BBC, have done deals with the Google-owned YouTube to feature their shows on their own branded channels, others, including Viacom and the Premier League, have threatened it with legal action.
Broadcasters have for some time been working on how to deliver on-demand programming over the internet and mobile devices.
The BBC has launched a public trial of its long-mooted iPlayer, which offers any programme from the last seven days, while ITV and Channel 4 also offer similar catch-up services. Apple offers paid-for downloads of TV shows through iTunes, while NBC and News Corp recently launched a video site in the US.
The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, has made reconnecting with younger viewers a main plank of his Creative Future plan designed to maintain support for the licence fee in an age of digital choice.
But broadcasters have only recently turned their attention to spreading their programmes throughout the web. Web 2.0 logic dictates that broadcasters will stand a better chance of continuing to reach mass audiences if they are able to scatter clips, programmes and other background material throughout the web to users who will no longer head for “destination sites” to watch it.
To this end, media companies have been engaged in a desperate race to sign deals with new TV-over-the-internet platforms such as Joost, while at the same time policing the web for pirate content.
Shields likened the typical Bebo profile to a teenager’s bedroom. It became an extension of their personality by hosting pictures and notes from friends and displaying their favourite bands and TV shows, she said.
She predicted the new deals would help mark it out from its rivals, describing Facebook as a functional BlackBerry equivalent and Bebo as a multimedia iPod Touch.
Bebo and other websites are now commissioning their own shows. Attempts at interactive online dramas are nothing new - US series The Spot was made in 1995 - but the popularity and marketing power of Bebo has arguably made them viable for the first time. Kate Modern, a thriller starring Ralf Little made by the team behind US YouTube phenomenon LonelyGirl 115, was watched 25m times in three months and allowed Bebo users to interact with the characters. It also featured sponsorship deals, such as one with Warner Music to put its act The Days into the storyline, and product placement of the kind that is banned on television. It will be followed by drama Sofia’s Diary, made by Sony, and The Gap Year, an Endemol “interactive online reality drama”, following six contestants travelling the globe.
Via Guardian Online (Owen Gibson, media correspondent)
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