The BBC has today announced a new initiative called BBC Taster that it hopes will help to showcase new digital talent across its platforms.
The organization said the Taster site will draw on feedback from viewers and will be used to incubate new ideas. It added that the hub will use a range of formats for these ideas, like mashups, radio shows, interactive digital poetry and a range of other left-field suggestions.
In short, it’s the BBC’s new home for all its interactive, short-form, social content, and online feature experimentation.
As well as providing the BBC with a playground for new ideas, the platform also encourages users to rate content and share it with a wider circle, thereby helping it to focus on creating content and media formats that resonate best with audiences for a relatively low cost.
Some of the Taster items currently available have specific hardware or software requirements, but the project pages will warn of any limitations before you start.
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The actual testing of new ideas is nothing new to the BBC, but this is the first time that the organization’s prototyping has been put into the public eye – obviously projects that aren’t ready for public attention will still initially be developed in private.
The move should also help the Beeb reach a younger demographic and glean better insight into the ideas that resonate best with them.
The site has been built with responsive design to allow for the ever growing numbers of mobile and tablet users across BBC platforms. According to a spokesperson, the BBC Online portal now receives as much traffic from mobile devices as it does via the desktop.
The announcement follows the continual refinement of its digital services like iPlayer, which recently gained 30-day playback of content that has been broadcast through the BBC’s TV channels.
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