The BBC's Erik Huggers believes that the broadcaster should be using its top 10 ranking in UK internet traffic to help out other British sites.
Huggers – who is the Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC – points out that, of the UK top-10 most visited sites, only the BBC is UK owned, and insists that the time has come to 'aggressively' link out to other British sites.
"The BBC's online presence is the only British owned presence in the top 10," Huggers said at a DTG conference. "Everything else in the top 10 in terms of the most visited is foreign – the BBC is the only one in there.
Share and share alike
"So why can't we find a way to take all that traffic and help share it with other public service broadcasters and with other public bodies so that if our boat rises on the tide, everyone's boat rises on the tide?
"Rather than trying to keep all that traffic inside the BBC's domain we're going to link out very aggressively and help other organisations pull their way up on the back of the investments that the BBC has made in this area."
The majority of the UK's traffic goes to US owned sites like Google, Ebay, Facebook, Windows Live, YouTube and Yahoo, leaving BBC as a solitary UK presence.
