Blue-Sky Thinking For 2008

A key figure at Sky News says the future for the big media players lies in social networking applications and multi-platform distribution.

Steve Bennedik reveals that a recent trip to visit news groups Stateside has left him convinced that broadcasters need to cease being so protectionist in their approaches.

The networked media editor tells journalism.co.uk that the goal for major news providers is to find a method of making it easy to spread their content across the multiple platforms now available, from social networking sites to mobile phones and PCs.

He asserts: “It’s increasingly important to let people invite you into their world, so many people are spending so much time on social networking, if you can enter that world you can become part of that group, that will become increasingly important.

“To have a news application that works on Facebook, it doesn’t necessarily take us a lot of time to do ... it’s those sort of things that will become increasingly important to major players in the future.”

Bennedik also discloses that Sky’s next big project will be its spring relaunch - with the inclusion of more user-generated content and video news.

If you want to read more from Steve Bennedik, you can find his news views on the Sky News Editors’ Blog.