Going Social with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer Beta
Post categories: ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD,Ìýbeta,Ìýsocial
| 17:21 UK time, Monday, 7 June 2010
It's been a few days now since we launched the , and the has been fascinating. Lots of people have been on the new social features, in fact it's been in the new media and press coverage so far. So I thought it was time to give you a thorough run down of what we've done, how it works, and why we did what we did.
Why did ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer go social?
Simple. People love TV and Radio. But they also love telling people about it. People want others to enjoy just as much as they did. Often, they might evangelise 'round the watercooler' or down the pub. But with iPlayer and other media-on-demand services, suddenly you can take links to these programmes and email them round, or post them to social networking sites.
Now that's great, but when you're on or reading your email, you're not always in the mood to watch a 60 minute TV show or listen to a 3 hour Zane Lowe show.
Many people's watching and listening habits are driven by recommendations from friends, so what if you could see what your friends have recommended right at the moment you want to watch or listen to something? Wouldn't that be cool? It'd mean the next time you say "I've got an hour spare. I wonder what's good on iPlayer", you don't just have to rely on the schedule to pick programmes from - you have a ready made selection of awesome programmes, recommended by your friends, right there.
Clearly it was something we should try and make happen - the question was, How?
The Challenge
Friends. More and more people are using social networks to communicate with their friends. Some networks are different to others. For example, Facebook tends to be about the friends you've actually met. People on often follow people they know, but also celebrities or notable people within a field of interest. for example.
So how do we get your friends into iPlayer? I mean right there on the homepage of iPlayer? We had a few options.
1: build our own social network
One way of doing this was to build a totally standalone social network - one where you can find people on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, add them as friends, and voila! Well, why do that? People have got friends already - they're on Facebook, Twitter, and many other social networking sites. Building our own would have made it hard work to find your friends again, and hard work to keep it up to date. Not cool. Anyway, there are already too many social networks - the world doesn't need one more. In fact, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in it's recent strategy review said we "should not create stand-alone social networking sites, with any social propositions on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ site only there to aid engagement with ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ content... [we] will also ensure that [our] social activity works with external social networks". Clearly, this option was a no-go.
2: just do Facebook
Facebook, and its Facebook Connect system for third-parties has been phenomenally successful - used by hundreds of thousands of sites and millions of users. It allows a site to not bother building its own login system or social network, and in effect, to outsource it all to Facebook. Users get a nearly-one-click sign in, and a ready made circle of friends. Simple. But for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, it had one big drawback. What about people who don't use Facebook? Believe it or not, plenty of people don't. As a public service organisation, should we limit any social functionality in iPlayer to only those licence fee payers who use Facebook? No, we shouldn't. We'd really prefer something which lets people pick from a range of social networks, and something which is flexible enough to change and adapt as the popularity of social networks changes.
3: do Facebook AND other social networks
Another, simpler solution would be to let you pick just one social network from a range of social networks, and see just your friends from that social network in iPlayer. Sounds alright, but you'd only see recommendations from your friends who'd also chosen the same social network as you. Imagine if your mate Dave had picked Twitter, and you'd picked Facebook. You wouldn't see anything he'd recommended. Rubbish.
4: a hybrid solution
Looking at all the previous options, it was clear we needed to do something different. We wanted users to be able to choose from a range of social networks - and allow people to connect to multiple networks, not just one. We also wanted it to just work - set it up and off it goes. We didn't want people to have to go back to select new people to add every few days, or have to worry about where they came from. We just wanted all the recommendations, from all your friends, in one place.
What we eventually came up with allows you to get exactly that. You can connect your ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD to a range of social networks (currently two: Facebook and Twitter, but expandable over time) and our system will do all the clever stuff to bring your friends from all those social networks right into iPlayer.
For example, I'm pretty active on both and . Facebook is where most of my real friends are, but on Twitter loads of really interesting people. With the technology we've built for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer, I get to see friends from both those sites right there in the Friends drawer, no segregation, no duplication. Superb.
, our system will find all your friends from all your networks who also use iPlayer. And as more of your friends connect their ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iDs to Facebook and Twitter, they'll just start appearing on the iPlayer homepage as soon as they recommend some content. "But what if one of my friends keeps giving me rubbish recommendations?"... I hear you ask. Luckily, you've still got the option to remove people in your . Removing people just means you won't see them any more in iPlayer. Don't worry, they're still your friend on Facebook or Twitter, but you no longer have to be bombarded with their 'dodgy' recommendations.
The clever technology layer that makes this all work is something we call SNeS (officially 'Social Networking Services', but named in homage to the ). SNeS is actually our own implementation of , the Google-backed project which standardises social applications. Furthermore, SNeS is built around , the reference implementation of OpenSocial. It's SNeS that keeps track of who your friends are, and what they've been recommending - and serves it up to you, in real time right there in iPlayer. It's the social brain of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website. SNeS is a proper heavyweight piece of engineering. It can deal with millions of users making millions of recommendations to millions of friends - something you need when you're working with one of the biggest video sites on the web. You'll be seeing more in-depth blog posts about how it all works over the coming months.
But why did you put all the social stuff behind your own ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD?
The plan for the next year is to roll out the full, social, personalised ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer experience across nearly all the other platforms which currently support iPlayer. That includes mobiles, games consoles, set-top boxes and IP-connected TVs. We're going to bring Favourites and For You to those platforms too - and you're going to need ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD if you want your personal Favourites and suggestions to follow you across platforms. Given this, it would have been silly to make you connect to Twitter and Facebook directly on each of these platforms. Besides, iPlayer is available on many more diverse platforms that Facebook Connect is.
By putting our social connectivity behind ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD, it means all the great social features will be rolled out to all our other platforms over time. It means you only have to connect once to Facebook and Twitter on the web, and manage all your settings there. Then, when you're on your IP-connected TV or your mobile device - your Friends will be right there, recommending great content to you.
Broadcasting your Recommendations
Everything I've talked about so far is about getting recommendations from Friends - but for this to be of any use, we had to get people to make recommendations in the first place.
Again, we could have just added a few links on each programme page saying 'post to Facebook' or 'post to Twitter'. But as we discussed earlier, we wanted to show what people were recommending in iPlayer, not just in Facebook and Twitter. Only posting out to Facebook or Twitter would have meant we'd have to constantly monitor the whole of Facebook and Twitter to see what your Friends were recommending, and pull that into iPlayer. Not an easy task, and something which gets much harder the more people join. Even so, scouring Facebook and Twitter for direct recommendations is something we're actively looking at for the future.
In the meantime, our solution was to allow you to make public recommendations on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website.
When you turn on the social features in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer, you're opting in to getting a public profile page on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website. Ìýfor example. Any recommendations you make in iPlayer (or indeed elsewhere as we roll out the ability to Recommend across the rest of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website) will appear on your public profile for others to see. This isn't new for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ at all - we've had public profiles and public spacesÌýon the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website for years now.Ìý
These profiles also include some cool new data views - namelyÌýÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýÌý(³Ü²õ¾±²Ô²µÌýÌýextensions). This means you can use these feeds on your site, your blog, on other social networks or your favourite feedreader. It makes it really easy to add what you recommend on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖÌýÌýfor example.
By allowing you to make public recommendations we're allowing you to say to the world "I think this is great!". It adds a whole new dimension to the way you can navigate the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ site. Imagine seeing other people who've recommended similar things to you - and find even more great content through them. We call that Social Discovery - and we think its a fantastic new way of finding new stuff to watch, listen or read.
Having public recommendations is also key in allowing us to support social networks like Twitter which have what's called an . This means its possible to 'follow' a user without them having to follow you back (Facebook on the other hand uses a symmetric friendship model - each of your Facebook friends has agreed to be your friend - so you both have each other as friends). Imagine if your recommendations were only visible to people who follow you - there'd be an odd scenario where someone who follows you on Twitter, that you don't follow, could see your ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ recommendations - effectively making them public anyway.
Other services like have taken in their social integrations. And like Spotify, you have complete control over your Public Profile. You can delete individual recommendations, you can change or remove your public profile picture, and you can choose any ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD DisplayName you want if you prefer to keep your anonymity. We hope the benefits and simplicity of allowing you to make public recommendations is balanced by the control you have over what you recommend, and what you can remove.
What next?
It's very early days for the social features in iPlayer, but it's fair to say this is exciting new ground for us - and we're monitoring how people use these new features closely. We're actively asking for feedback at this stage (via the admittedly verbose on Twitter or comments at the bottom of this entry).
We're looking at improvements we can make to the social features in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer, but we're also looking at other parts of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ site where this kind of deeply-embedded social functionality would make a real benefit to some of our users. If it goes down well, and people find it useful, expect to see the ability to Recommend content outwards, and see what your Facebook and Twitter friends have been recommending, spread through more parts of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website.
Simon Cross is Executive Product Manager, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD and Flow,
Comment number 1.
At 7th Jun 2010, Briantist wrote:OK, it's great that I can see what other people recommend.
However, once you have made a recommendation, that's it. You can't enter into a discussion about a programme.
It would be good if you could have a way of interacting with your friends.
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Comment number 2.
At 7th Jun 2010, FishFingers wrote:Simon - I would be very interested to hear what research the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ did into its own effect on the two social networks supported. Every week the "Twitter" name is mentioned many, many times across TV, Radio and Online and Facebook gets a lot of mentions too.
One has to wonder what role the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ played in establishing these two as the leading networks in the UK and whether it is against the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's own guidelines to do so. Remember, both Facebook and Twitter are profit making companies.
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Comment number 3.
At 7th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:Once again the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ are promoting two commercial websites over all others, hardly in keeping with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Royal Charter commitments, please desist from this blatant breach of your responsibilities...
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Comment number 4.
At 7th Jun 2010, Chris wrote:I'd like to be able to 'recommend' call-it-what-you-will from within Facebook (or Twitter for that matter) using something akin to using the
'@' feature in Facebook. @³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖOne...
I imagine that would need Facebook to make changes on their side though, unless I make those ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ programmes pages? and 'Like' those pages?
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Comment number 5.
At 7th Jun 2010, lucas42 wrote:The data views are cool. Though the links to recipes all seem to leave out "/food/recipes/" from the url. Also, if I try to look up the guids (eg /users/sicross/activities/2c97888a28d301291208cb08315b ), I get a 403 forbidden error; though I'm not an expert on RSS, I'm not sure if you're meant to be able to look up guids.
Is there (or will there be) a stream of all my friends' activities? I couldn't find one, nor could I find a machine-readable list of all my friends so that I could create my own.
Its exciting that you've given us all our own foaf file too :) Are there plans to include links to facebook/twitter in those?
One thing that puzzles me is why all the URIs contain '.rdf' - The foaf files can be accessed using content negotiation just like /programmes where none of the URIs have an extension.
I think the whole activity streams thing is positive step forward. Perhaps one day I'll be able to find all my blog post comments in there too.
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Comment number 6.
At 7th Jun 2010, Green Soap wrote:Can you turn all these "social" applications off, and be anti-social?
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Comment number 7.
At 7th Jun 2010, Darren wrote:I added my friends, and then they added me, via facebook, I can see my friend, and I can view his page, and it shows his recommendations, however on my "friends" tab on iPlayer, it does not show his recommendations. He can see my recommendations in all places.
Why is this?
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Comment number 8.
At 8th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#6. At 11:39pm on 07 Jun 2010, Tengsted wrote:
"Can you turn all these "social" applications off, and be anti-social?"
Many would say that having these applications are the anti social part, so disabling them would actually be "Going Social", why - because without such applications people would have to actually talk, or at least email their fiends, and lets face(book) it, many of the so called 'friends' on these social networking sites are not friends at all, just on-line (physically anonymous) contacts...
The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ should be actively discouraging such on-line behaviour, not encouraging it!
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Comment number 9.
At 8th Jun 2010, MusicRab wrote:The public profile link is wrong, wrong, wrong.
e.g. yours is
Note that "sicross" is your "username"
They should be using "displayname". Of-course some people may choose these to be the same, but most would not want their username to be made public.
Tch, Tch, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. But then it is a Beta.
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Comment number 10.
At 8th Jun 2010, Simon Cross wrote:Hi all, thanks for your comments - let me respond to some of them...
#4 @Chris - yeah, we're looking at this too - we think we might be able to make it work. It would be cool to be able to recommend something via Twitter or Facebook and have it appear on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ - or to use Twitter to let you send recommendations of what you're watching on live TV now. We have, in fact, already prototyped this, we just have to make it work at scale and iron out some unusual things....
#5 @lucas42 - you've delved deeper than most ;-) We don't plan to expose the social graph by default as we're not trying to be a social network, but we might add it as an option. As for the bugs in the feeds, yep, we're on em!
#7 @Darren - the way it works currently is the iPlayer drawer will fill up with recommendations made by your friends AFTER you've connected to them - which means you won't see stuff in iPlayer they recommended before you connected. We're looking to see if we can change this as it would make the first-time-user journey much better I agree.
#9 @MusicRab - we made a clear decision early on that usernames were to public and for use in URLs, and your DisplayName is what we call you around the site within the pages. It's the most common design pattern seen in lots and lots of sites eg: . We wanted our user URLs to be clean, human readable, yet persistant. You can change your displayname as much as you like. This, combines with the fact that it can contain all kinds of charachters (spaces, unicode etc) which aren't suitable for use in URLs. Of course, you can always create a new ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD with a username you're happy to be displayed.
Hope that's useful - I'll try and reply to more questions as they arise.
Simon Cross, Exec Product Manager, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD and Social
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Comment number 11.
At 8th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#10. At 1:48pm on 08 Jun 2010, Simon Cross wrote:
"Hi all, thanks for your comments - let me respond to some of them...
#4 @Chris - yeah, we're looking at this too - we think we might be able to make it work. It would be cool to be able to recommend something via Twitter or Facebook and have it appear on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ - or to use Twitter to let you send recommendations of what you're watching on live TV now. We have, in fact, already prototyped this, we just have to make it work at scale and iron out some unusual things...."
Could this be a opt-in/out feature, perhaps using the same back-end technology that is being developed for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖpage, the last thing many want is to be confronted with anything to do with either a 'Mugshot-book' or Cuckoos singing in our nests...
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Comment number 12.
At 8th Jun 2010, lucas42 wrote:Simon, regarding using usernames in URLs, I think the most important thing is to keep it consistent throughout the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ site.
RSS feeds for blog comments (e.g. /dna/blog101/rss/acs?dnauid=movabletype101_221512 ) use display names.
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖiD profiles (e.g. ) use usernames.
Profiles for blog comments (e.g. /blogs/profile.shtml?userid=13791927 ) use a numeric identifier
And lists of blog posts (e.g. /blogs/bbcinternet/simon_cross/ ) seem to use something different again.
You're being identified as "Simon Cross", "sicross", "13791927" and "simon_cross". This causes lots of problems. For example, I tried to write a script which would take the RSS feed for blog comments and then match each commenter with the picture from their FOAF file. Unfortunately this only works for people who have the same username and display name.
It would be great if the whole site used the same identifiers. Failing this, perhaps there could be a simple way of finding one given another.
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Comment number 13.
At 9th Jun 2010, Green Soap wrote:@11 +1 from me.
"Social" might be the in thing, but to not to have a choice is downright ill mannered.
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Comment number 14.
At 9th Jun 2010, _Ewan_ wrote:Tengsted - in what sense do you not have a choice? Don't link your ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ id to any social network accounts, and you'll get no social network integration features.
What am I missing here?
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Comment number 15.
At 9th Jun 2010, Simon Cross wrote:#12 @lucas42 - totally agree! We're at the start of this process. You'll start to see all the functions of the other profiles get folded into the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD-based profiles over time. And yes, that'll mean these different URLs and user IDs get simplified to all hang off the username.
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Comment number 16.
At 9th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#14. At 00:42am on 09 Jun 2010, _Ewan_ wrote:
"Tengsted - in what sense do you not have a choice? Don't link your ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ id to any social network accounts, and you'll get no social network integration features.
What am I missing here?"
The thing is Ewan, at the moment this blog is only about the one ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ application (iPlayer), but as "³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖiD" is a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ domain wide log-in there might well be - in the future - other ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ applications were a user does want to link their ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖiD to certain social network accounts. For example, to use Facebook as an example, someone might wish to link their H2G2 activity to any future 'Facebook H2G2 User Group' but would not want theirs or others iPlayer usage linked, thus any linking should be on a per-application bases. Or is that the default anyway?
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Comment number 17.
At 9th Jun 2010, Green Soap wrote:@14 _Ewan_
The modules on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ homepage give the users control over the content that's provided.
Should these social gizmos be added to the iPlayer homepage as a default? I don't think so. They should be an opt in service - there if you want to add it. The "Friends" section is there already - without adding anything to it. It adds nothing if you don't want to socialize.
It would be more like the iPlayer website was made similar to the homepage where you could chose the type of iPlayer programmes you wish to view, such as a Drama module, Sport module, etc, and you could tailor it far more to YOU than recommendations that someone you once met at a party and added them as a Facebook friend has given.
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Comment number 18.
At 9th Jun 2010, baldie_chick wrote:It's probably in there somewhere, but doesn't seem to be in the 'Friends' FAQ....If your friend gives you their ID and you give them yours, how can you link your profiles so their recommendations appear directly in your own friends tab? Other than via facebook that is. The above article (point 1) suggests this is possible. Thanks
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Comment number 19.
At 10th Jun 2010, Simon Cross wrote:#18 @baldie_chick - We've built it as option 4 - the hybrid solution - this means there's currently no way to add someone to your friends directly on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ site - you have to know them on Facebook or Twitter first.
If lots of people ask for that feature then its certainly something we can add in...
S
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Comment number 20.
At 10th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#19. At 10:19am on 10 Jun 2010, Simon Cross wrote:
"you have to know them on Facebook or Twitter first.
So the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is forcing people to use a commercial website, doesn't that constitute a form of promotion and is thus directly against the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Royal Charter, please desist...
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Comment number 21.
At 10th Jun 2010, Dave Holland wrote:I'm intrigued by the plans to extend this social-ness to platforms like the Wii. My family uses iPlayer on the Wii quite a lot, we think it's great. However, will we in future have to log in to use it? Or will the recommendations become a mish-mash of my thrillers, my wife's documentaries, and our children's favourites? I can't see either prospect as particularly appealing.
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Comment number 22.
At 10th Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Boilerplated - the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is not forcing anybody to do anything. People don't have to use these social features if they don't want to. As Simon explains above the range of social networks will expand over time.
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Comment number 23.
At 10th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#22. At 12:07pm on 10 Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:
"Boilerplated - the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is not forcing anybody to do anything. People don't have to use these social features if they don't want to. As Simon explains above the range of social networks will expand over time."
So what is ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ doing, spending our money on application that we can't use?!...
The fact is, if people do want to use these applications that we (the TVL payer) have paid for then the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ IS forcing them to sign up to use commercial websites, something that is against the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Royal Charter as the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is by default promoting those commercial websites.
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Comment number 24.
At 10th Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Boilerplated - I'd be interested to read the section of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Charter where it says this. Perhaps you could link to it for me.
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Comment number 25.
At 10th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#24. At 1:39pm on 10 Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:
"Boilerplated - I'd be interested to read the section of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Charter where it says this. Perhaps you could link to it for me."
Hmm, now you have asked...
6.The independence of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ
(1) The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ shall be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output, the times and manner in which this is supplied, and in the management of its affairs.
If the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is reliant on an interface with FaceBook Inc. or Twitter Inc. to offer the afore mentioned functionality within the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's iPlayer then surely it is not being independent in the "content of its output, the times and manner in which this is supplied, and in the management of its affairs". So unless this application can work independently of external - non ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ controlled - social networking sites this application is failing to comply with the above (section 6 of the Royal Charter), as Facebook or Twitter are in effect (technically) controlling access to ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ content by being in effect a form of EPG/programme control.
If this application used a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ social network, with just the ability to also (opt-in and) share ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖiD data with other - external - social networking sites, rather than requiring those other external social networking sites to work it would be OK...
Whilst one can claim that the iPlayer, and any social media linking, are not primary methods of content provision, the wider the iPlayer appeal, the faster end-users IP connections become, the increase in IPTV's, who knows how some will get their ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ content in the near future.
This is on top of what is basically the over promotion of certain websites, a long and ongoing problem.
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Comment number 26.
At 10th Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Hi Boilerplated,
Firstly I disgree with you that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is "over promoting" certain websites. This is always going to be a matter of taste and judgement of course.
Secondly I disagree with you about your interpretation of the clause in the Charter. My interpretation would be more simple: the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ decides what it does, not other people. It's about managerial and editorial independence from third parties. In other words the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has the right to partner up with anyone it likes (and indeed it does) as long as the decision to do so is freely made by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, not under duress.
I certainly don't think doing this gives third parties control of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's content as you seem to imply. Maybe it gives users more control but that may not be a bad thing.
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Comment number 27.
At 10th Jun 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#26. At 4:07pm on 10 Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:
"In other words the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has the right to partner up with anyone it likes (and indeed it does) as long as the decision to do so is freely made by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, not under duress."
But what about the TVL payer who doesn't want to be forced to use either Facebook or Twitter under duress but does want to make use of this ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ owned ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖiD/iPlayer application?!
Also in my opinion you are wrong in saying that it's all just about managerial and editorial independence from third parties, the Royal Charter explicitly states (my italic emphasis) "The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ shall be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output, the times and manner in which this is supplied..//..", the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ - whilst no longer being owners/partners of transmitter sites - has legal contracts/redress should one of the private and independent TX companies fail to maintain the service, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has contracts/legal redress with regards its output chain (both TV and internet services), what redress does the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and thus the viewer/listener have in the case of a non functioning third party Facebook or Twitter website [or part of] when Licence Fee payers, as defined within the Royal Charter, are let down by a non functioning programme referral system, perhaps missing the last chance to catch a programme? If these external websites cause an outage of this service will the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ make an exception of any 7 days listing period or will the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ just wash their hands of the issue?
Whilst the Royal Charter gives editorial and management freedoms it also lays down certain responsibilities, unfortunately it has become the norm within the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to pay nothing but lip-service (in my opinion) to much of these responsibilities, as an example, the head-long rush into ratings battles with commercial broadcasters has all but reversed, if not rewritten, the meaning of section 5 of the Royal Charter;
"5. How the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ promotes its Public Purposes: the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s mission to inform, educate and entertain
(1) The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s main activities should be the promotion of its Public Purposes through the provision of output which consists of information, education and entertainment,..//.."
There is much entertainment, little education and almost no information beyond news (and what remains is contained within entertainment like programming and thus much dumbed down), whilst the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is not in technical breach of the Royal Charter, it is not complying to the order in which its responsibilities are laid down. But I digress...
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Comment number 28.
At 10th Jun 2010, baldie_chick wrote:Issues over regulations aside, I personally would be very keen to see the option to link to friends directly via ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, as I (and more importantly, many of my friends) are becoming increasingly wary of facebook privacy issues (a matter on which I have been myself predominantly informed via ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ coverage in fact). Best regards.
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Comment number 29.
At 12th Jun 2010, BTCustomer wrote:Is there any connection between this iPlayer move, and the fact that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Flash player has just started to use covert Flash LSO setting, without which the videos simply don't work? (for example virtually all video on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News site won't work unless LSO's are set). I discovered this because I had LSO setting blocked globally, and a couple of days ago all the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ video content "broke" until I removed the block on LSOs. I've had the block in place for months, but the videos only stopped working a couple of days ago. Similarly if Firefox BetterPrivacy is set to prevent ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News videos storing LSOs then the videos won't play either.
I don't recall being notified or asked for consent on the introduction of this covert tracking via LSOs. Social networking is all very well, but it needs to be based on full transparency and explicit consent. The change to LSO setting and tracking with ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Flash video seems to have been an entirely covert matter. I thought the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ didn't use commercial tracking on UK site visitors because of the Charter/Trust conditions?
Here's hoping for an innocent explanation, or even better, withdrawal of the obligatory setting of LSOs for those who want to view news video. I'm quite nervous about having my ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ video viewing habits tracked covertly.
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Comment number 30.
At 12th Jun 2010, J D wrote:I hope the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ likes salted cookies & LSOs.
Keep Off the grass unless invited my surfing habits are my own!
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Comment number 31.
At 15th Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:BTCustomer - I asked the technical team concerned about your query and this was their response:
"We understand the problem you are having – our media player did not previously require LSOs. We are however in the process of making some fundamental technical changes to it, and while we’re doing this you will not be able to use the player properly if you disable LSOs. Doing this does not conflict with our privacy policies, but we’re aiming to remove this dependency once the changes are complete."
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Comment number 32.
At 26th Jun 2010, J D wrote:Complain about this comment (Comment number 32)
Comment number 33.
At 28th Jun 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Regarding LSOs on media player we now have a blog post about this subject so could you leave comments about that there please.
Thanks.
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Comment number 34.
At 28th Jun 2010, Dave Holland wrote:The discussion about Facebook and cookies is interesting but I wondered if there was anything to share on my question in #21? Thanks.
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Comment number 35.
At 28th Sep 2010, RougeEtNoir wrote:I am not and have never been on Facebook or Twitter - does this mean that I cannot recommend things?
When I try I just remain in the loop 'Get Started', click 'Done'. It is extremely frustrating for the screen content to imply that you can make recommendations without adding contacts from those 2 sites if that is not the case.
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Comment number 36.
At 24th Feb 2011, huntingtonpaper wrote:You are right @14 _Ewan_
The modules on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ homepage give the users control over the content that's provided.Should these social gizmos be added to the iPlayer homepage as a default? I don't think so. They should be an opt in service - there if you want to add it. The "Friends" section is there already - without adding anything to it. It adds nothing if you don't want to socializeIt would be more like the iPlayer website was made similar to the homepage where you could chose the type of iPlayer programmes you wish to view, such as a Drama module, Sport module, etc, and you could tailor it far more to YOU than recommendations that someone you once met at a party and added them as a Facebook friend has given.
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Comment number 37.
At 11th Mar 2011, hantulaut wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 38.
At 11th Mar 2011, hantulaut wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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