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PBS Engage

In the last few years we’ve witnessed exponential growth in activity on social networking web sites like MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, or Bebo; social media sites are pulling audience away from traditional online news sources.. MySpace, for example, now commands the largest percentage of traffic on the web, over Google and Yahoo! MySpace alone has 57 million users. The average age of a MySpace user is now 35 years old, with 35+ making up 52 percent of the audience. YouTube has 30.5 million users. And one third of that audience is over 45. Social networking sites are no longer just for kids.

But where can adults turn to connect with like-minded Internet users around topics other than Britney Spears’ shaved head, karaoke parodies, or amazing pet tricks? While popular social networking sites are slowly evolving to include more social issue content, there are currently few places on the web where citizens can go for thoughtful dialogue and informed conversation; to connect with a diverse group of intelligent, like-minded people who may have important perspectives or experiences to share, but who may be living across the globe, across the country, or right next door in your local community.

Enter PBS Engage.

PBS Engage is a digital public media initiative that will fill that void. PBS Engage is designed to take advantage of new platforms and cutting-edge technology in order to create an ongoing “Public Square” for informed online dialogue and two-way conversation, be it on PBS.org, member station web sites, PBS national program sites, on like-minded PBS partner sites, or among and between public television members themselves.

It is critical that PBS enter the social media space. This is not only because there is an unfulfilled need to foster an informed and active citizenry in an increasingly complicated global world, but because it fills an arguably equal need for PBS itself to remain relevant in the digital age.  New technologies and an increasingly cluttered media environment are forcing PBS and its member stations to rethink and radically reframe their role in the media landscape. PBS and member stations are uniquely positioned to carve out a space for themselves as community brokers in a new media world, lest they quickly become not only “digitally irrelevant,” but potentially completely irrelevant to a growing segment of the audience who transcends traditional viewer segmentation or regional boundaries, and most importantly, expects a meaningful two-way conversation with media-makers and each other.  

The PBS audience is no longer passive. They are media makers. In 2006, the blogosphere had grown 100 times in three years, accounting for 50 million blogs. Recent research shows that more than half of today’s teens who use the Internet are “content producers.” If PBS is to serve the public, it must invite that public into the conversation, and into the content curation and production process.

PBS Engage will apply some of the lessons learned from successful social networking sites like MySpace and Linkedin, media-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, as well as user-participation and user-rating techniques that have fueled the growth of Digg.com. The goal of PBS Engage is to create best practices for current tools and determine appropriate integration of emerging technologies that will guide the development and implementation of a new suite of tools and technologies for national distribution to member station sites and producer properties.

The project will be iterative, rolled out as a series of “alpha” and “beta” experiments from which PBS, producers and stations can learn as the system strives to learn how to navigate the complicated world, nuances and ecology of online community and social media. Specific tools, vendors and features are not yet defined, since they will be developed as the result of a series of ongoing discussions with both industry experts and public broadcasting constituencies.

PBS Interactive has begun to put together an advisory board for PBS Engage with dynamic members in the social media community including academic researchers in the MIT Cultural Convergence Center Lab, Webby People's Choice Award-winning vloggers, Technorati top 50 popular bloggers, and other thought leaders. An integral part of the project will be a “kitchen cabinet” or advisory group of PBS member station leaders and innovators who either already experimenting in this area, or looking to apply learnings to their local member station sites. 

Sample features under consideration might include (but are not limited to) tools similar to those on the recently-redesigned USA Today Web site, such as the ability to see and react to what other web users are consuming online, write reviews, contribute photos, or comment. Future iterations of PBS Engage could include more ambitious experiments, such as the ability to interact with and contribute to the creation of online and television programming, the solicitation of video from the audience, or incorporation of some of the best tenets of citizen journalism. This year alone, Meetup.com, a social network focused on facilitating group meetings, has seen a 149% increase in traffic compared to last year, largely attributed to interest in and involvement with the 2008 elections. With additional funding, we believe that there could be a special role for PBS Engage vis-a-vis local/national engagement and election coverage.

The goal of any and all experiments would be to create more transparency with viewers and web users, and ultimately, to evolve and redefine the role of public broadcasting. The ultimate hope for PBS Engage is to make public media indispensable and inextricably intertwined in both the intellectual mindshare and daily lives of our country’s citizens.

According to the latest Roper poll [PDF file – Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view], Americans trust PBS more than any other public institution. PBS is uniquely positioned to not only extend that trust and sense of ownership through increased transparency and communication, but to construct a safe space for dialogue—a public square on PBS.org where the intelligent audience can engage each other and the pressing issues of the day.

We are at a unique point in time. At the precise point where PBS and member stations realize they must “evolve or die,” the audience is also changing: They are hungry for meaningful engagement in the world around them. And the media landscape, expectations around it, and rapidly developing technologies are all, finally, enabling PBS to …

“…put the public back in public media.”