BBC unveils radical revamp of website

Highfield: refocusing BBC digital output around three concepts - share, find and play

The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of new media and technology, also announced proposals to put the corporation's entire programme catalogue online for the first time from tomorrow in written archive form, as an "experimental prototype", and rebrand MyBBCPlayer as BBC iPlayer.

Mr Highfield was unveiling the results of the broadcaster's Creative Future review of programming and content before an audience of BBC new media staff.

The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, is also talking to staff today about the wider implications of the Creative Future review.

Mr Highfield's presentation, Beyond Broadcast, outlined a three-pronged approach to refocus all future BBC digital output and services around three concepts - "share", "find" and "play".

He said the philosophy of "share" would be at the heart of what he dubbed bbc.co.uk 2.0.

Mr Highfield said the share concept would allow users to "create your own space and to build bbc.co.uk around you", encouraging them to launch ther own blogs and post home videos on the site.

The BBC is also running a competition to revamp the bbc.co.uk 2.0 website, asking the public to redesign the homepage to "exploit the fuctionality and usability of services such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia".

At the heart of the play concept is MyBBCPlayer, which will allow the public to download and view BBC programming online and was today rebranded as BBC iPlayer.

"BBC iPlayer is going to offer catch-up television up to seven days after transmission," said Mr Highfield. "At any time you will be able to download any programme from the eight BBC channels and watch it on your PC and, we hope, move it across to your TV set or down to your mobile phone to watch it when you want."

The find concept relates to next-generation search and unlocking the BBC archive. From tomorrow internet users will for the first time be able to search for details of the corporation's entire programme catalogue as far back as 1937.