New BBC website "a major step forward"

Eric Huggers, the BBC's group controller of future media and technology, has hailed the corporation's first website make-over in five years as a "major step forward".

The bbc.co.uk portal is expected to get a makeover shortly; the beta version of the site's new homepage is already live.

Huggers, speaking at the FutureMedia conference in London, said the revamp will bring important changes by integrating a media player, allowing users to personalise the site and making them into distributors of content.

Personalisation functions will include being able to drag and drop different tools for the each user's needs, he said. They will be also able to link directly to video and audio and embed clips in their own websites, as with YouTube.

Huggers said "aggregated views" would mean content from across the website on a topic coming together in one page. He said it would eventually draw on 1.3m hours of clips.

He commented: "Personalisation may not be the newest thing on the block but believe you me - for the BBC this is a major step forward. This is a fantastic opportunity to provide value out of a wealth of information.

"Users will become our number one distributor - they will find it, play with it and distribute it. Syndication by the consumer is what will give us traction in the marketplace."