The BBC website is a major network hub. It has been through a redesign and a beta site is available for inspection. The home ‘page’ becomes a “page composition layer”.
From a conceptual point of view, the widgetization adopted by Facebook, iGoogle and netvibes weighed strongly on our initial thinking. We wanted to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the Internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content through technologies like RSS, atom and xml. This trend essentially abstracts the content from its presentation and distribution, atomizing content into a feed-based universe. Browsers, devices, etc therefore become lenses through which this content can be collected, tailored and consumed by the audience. [BBC Internet Blog – A lick of paint for the BBC homepage]
I will be interested to see how this plays out. Will people actually spend a lot of time customizing it for their use?