Great Websites: New BBC /Topics

Since the BBC post below got some helpful response, I have been meaning to take a quick look at the new stuff. Here goes...

Topics: First thoughts were that I like the simplicity of having all this information under one URL: /Topics. Maybe it's a bit superfluous though? We'll see. The obvious thing I am sure people will say is could it adopt some wikipedia type editing, so users can build out these topics. I guess it depends on the depth of the content the BBC has as to how successful this will be, and having user contributions would both be interesting and add to the depth.

One thing though. How would you ever get to /topics - is it via search I wonder?

 

I think /genre pages are a more clear cut benefit for me. These really tidy up some potentially problematic areas for the BBC. I think it is clever. It's effectively demonstrating what the BBC internally has probably said for years, that is that they do a lot more than TV, Radio and News. I would have been quite sceptical about this but as long as the genres make sense (and I think Arts and Culture does) I think it will work.

Two major benefits this could have are to make the bbc.co.uk experience far more uniform - which I think is good. It will also help people find what strengths BBC has in each Genre. In the case of Arts and Culture, it's the radio and TV output (that's what I get from that page) and for Gardening it that plus things like the Virtual Garden Tool and the Calendar. Overall, I think the genre pages are possibly the triumph, that's weird coz before it I would have said /Topics would be.

 

Another thing I like, looking quickly, is the global nav aid "Explore BBC" it helps tie this monster of a site together. So, overall the BBC investment seems to be paying off...