From Martin Belam on the BBC Internet Blog: Remembering myBBC
The freshly redesigned BBC homepage comes complete with a swishy new interface that allows users to customise the way the page appears to them. It isn’t the first time the BBC has dabbled with personalising homepages.
For some time now, users have been offered personalised weather on the BBC homepage, and BBC News has had a small panel for UK users allowing them to get their local stories straight away by entering their postcode.
The BBC homepage also used to have “targeted” promotions in the early 2000s. As users visited places around the BBC, a cookie would pick up where they went, and identify them as one of four types of the BBC’s web audience. When they visited the homepage, they would see a promotion appropriate to their audience type – i.e. whether they were a soaps/entertainment type, or a Radio 4/factual type.
The biggest attempt at personalisation on the BBC site, though, was a service launched in 2000, called myBBC. In some ways, it was rather ahead of its time.