ITV gets social with launch of Bebo profile
Following in the footsteps of the BBC (though I’m sure they’d deny that), ITV has announced that it is to launch a profile on popular social networking site Bebo. This will contain a number of media channels promoting a range of content from ITV2, considered to be the best “fit” for Bebo users. The first programme to grace the network will be “Gossip Girl”.
ITV are pushing quite hard with their online efforts. Since they made a range of content available on the ITV.com web site around eight months ago, they’re claiming six million unique users.
However, their online efforts currently suffer similar issues to the ones the BBC is slowly resolving — that of platform compatibility. Their “Brightcove” player requires a Windows PC running Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Flash, plus a DRM add-on. Quite a heady mix of proprietary stuff that keeps the likes of Linux and Mac users away. Where the BBC has been forced to make iPlayer compatible with other platforms, I’m not sure whether ITV, as a commercial company, would face similar requirements.
That’s probably why talk of getting ITV content on the iPhone is very non-specific at present. ITV’s head of consumer publicity, Hannah Middleton, said, “We’ve got ITV mobile, so any commissions we make are multiplatform, and of course we are thinking about mobile as well.”
Great, but you won’t be playing any content on your iPhone with the current system requirements. The Beeb may have elected to use Quicktime but other broadcasters aren’t doing that.
(Via Tech Radar)
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