iPlayer developments
Anthony Rose of BBC iPlayer has outlined his plans for “Broadcast 2.0” in an interview with the Guardian (anyone other than me tiring of the “2.0″ thing yet? Yes, thought so..)
Lots of interesting developments in there (particularly in terms of DRM and the migration to an AIR based platform) but one that caught my eye was about the social aspects of viewing:
Rating works really well in YouTube where you’ve got a million videos. In iPlayer, if you rate Parliament channel as zero stars, are you saying that Parliament is rubbish, or that you just don’t want to watch Parliament? Rating in the context of the BBC is very useful, but only when you’ve got a friends network.
It’ll be interesting to see whether small networks of friends will take to what amounts to yet another social network, albeit based around a huge brand like iPlayer.
My feeling is that the conversation will take place better on other platforms that are set up for peer-to-peer communication as they do at the moment: down the pub and on Twitter.
