UK satellite-TV provider, BSkyB, is teaming with Pluck, a company
that specializes in providing social media capabilities to businesses, to
embed a range of social media services in its Web portal (includes such
sites as skynews.com, sky.com and sky.com/showbiz). The new
functionality, which is scheduled to be rolled out across the entire
portal this fall, will be offered under the brand, Sky Community.
According to BSkyB, the incorporation of social networking
functionality will promote audience engagement and provide improved
levels of integration across its portal.
The first Sky Web site to feature social media functionality is
skynews.com: it currently offers blogs, discussion boards and user
comments; and will shortly launch a user-generated "citizen
journalism" section where viewers can share videos, photos and
comments on breaking news events. Sky.com, Sky Entertainment, Sky
Motoring and other Sky sites will launch multimedia blogs and
discussion forums this fall, BSkyB says, and Pluck's profiling
technology will allow end-users to create and use a single profile that
will be integrated across all the sites.
In other BSkyB news: The company has teamed with Sony to launch a
service, called Go!View, that enables users of Sony's PlayStation
Portable to download movies and TV programming (via their PC) for
playback on that device.
