Social-networking at the BBC?!

The youth- and user-driven Web is invading that ol' granddaddy the BBC even. Its director-general Mark Thompson just announced a big shakeup after saying the BBC "was increasingly seen as irrelevant by younger audiences," The Times of London reports. Britain's publicly funded broadcaster will "revamp its Web site to include user-generated content such as blogs, music and home videos, similar to the MySpace service that is hugely popular with teenagers," according to Reuters. That will include a new "teen brand" and fresh content for people 12-16 on TV, radio, and the Web, MediaGuardian adds, listing a bunch of changes. All the new developments are meant to make the BBC more "on-demand" and responsive to a much more user-generated media environment, C21Media.net reports. All I can say is that MySpace parent News Corp. must be glad organizations like the BBC are joining it on Web 2.0, figuring out how to foster self-expression as well as self-protection among teen users. [While we're on the subject, Microsoft will be doing S-N too: The company announced "a joint venture with Wallop to get in the game," Internet News reports, describing Wallop as kind of a blend of MySpace and Friendster.]