Tulisa on the Moyles show

The Asian Network's website is starting a journey of change as of today.

We've released a new, more dynamic homepage that focuses on live radio. It takes full advantage of a widescreen format and gives us better spaces to promote Asian Network content. The long term aim is that we develop the Asian Network homepage into something more like the current Radio 1 and 1xtra homepages. These took over a year to come to fruition from concept to launch (read more here), but rather than wait another year, we've decided to strip back the site and release something now that we can develop over time.

Greater automation in this new homepage allows us to focus on producing content and building closer relationships with audiences through social media, such as our Facebook and Twitter pages, rather than spending lots of time manually updating the site.

The aim is that Asian Network audiences will have more information about the show that's currently on-air as well as better access to some of the best bits of the station's output that we're beginning to clip and publish online to listen and watch.

This new version of our homepage is the first step for Asian Network on the ladder towards a new radio and music product which will launch in 2012. Some of the ideas we're using on this version of the homepage may be incorporated into the radio and music product. We'll be releasing updated versions of the homepage during the coming months. Your feedback is really important in helping us on this journey - so please do tell us what you think here.

Dharmesh Rajput is Interactive Editor, BBC Asian Network

• BBC Radio have also updated their current homepage. Read Chris Kimber's post on the Internet Blog for more information.

Editor's note: Brett was previously the interactive editor of 5 live before becoming the managing editor at Three Counties Radio. I asked him for his thoughts on the role of social networks in local radio. (PM)

Last July I left BBC Radio 5 live after six years and drove north to Luton. I hadn't worked in local radio since the early nineties, but the chance to run my nearest radio station was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The 5 Live newsroom I left was fully engaged with social media, with a variety of Facebook and Twitter accounts, presenters engaging with the audience and audio and video shared and distributed daily.

At BBC Three Counties Radio I quickly found that social media was not really on the agenda. So as we set about putting together a new schedule and defining how we were going to re-shape the programming, I thought it was important to get the station working in digital spaces at the same time.

Working with the brilliant Claire Wardle and Sue Llewellyn we designed two days to talk to everyone in the station about what could be achieved. Every producer and presenter spent 2 hours learning the essentials. There was a clear message: if we do this, it will increase the reach of our radio content.

But it's not just about teaching people what to do. Integrating social media into the radio station needs support from the very top. The management needs to be engaged and actively involved. It's not enough to have a lone person in the newsroom responsible for social media, it's everybody's job.

At 3CR the two news editors that cover the broadcast day now have it as part of their job description to update social media, share content and engage with the listeners. We created time in their day to do this. Just as crucially the journalists are using it as a newsgathering tool.

In just a few weeks we found on Twitter a gamer addicted to playing 18 hours a day that tied into a Panorama programme, friends of a murder victim and a local man who was designing a space mission to name just three. We uncovered local stories, new guests and shared masses of content. When we tweeted and engaged on Facebook about a local park being closed in Bushey, the callers that rang in were keen to point out that they had never listened to 3CR - and didn't know it covered their area. We found an 18 year old dancer from Hertfordshire waiting in a queue outside the Hammersmith Apollo to audition for Britain's Got Talent.

Additionally, and just as importantly, the presenters are connecting with the listeners in digital spaces for the first time. Social media is being used to extend the reach of the radio station and bring new ears to 3CR content. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was Melvin, a caller ranting about how much he hated the Royal Wedding. He was on air at 0920. Laura Miller, who produces the mid-morning show, had this on Audioboo and in the Twittersphere by 0935, as she continued to output the show. To date, as a result of social media, it's been played 115,000 times, that's greater than the weekly reach of some stations. Melvin may have called his local station in Luton, but the next day he could hear his call being played and talked about on WNYC in New York.

So has this strategy it worked? Well admittedly it's difficult to equate social media activity directly to gains in listeners. But last week BBC Three Counties Radio had its best Rajar for six years. I would like to think the two are connected.

Brett Spencer is currently working on social media innovation projects for BBC English Regions. Follow his personal account on Twitter @brettsr

• Follow BBC Three Counties Radio on Twitter at @bbc3cr
• Read radio and new media consultant Matt Deegan's blog post on radio and Twitter ("...Overall, Twitter is a great resource and platform to help grow audience and engagement. Remember though that the vast majority of your listeners probably don't care..."): Radio's Twitter Obsession

At Radio 1's Big Weekend 2011 we are testing a new mobile feature that allows the audience to say "I'm here now" to their friends while watching their favourite artists throughout the day. The key thing is that they have to be present at a stage to check in.

So why are we doing this? This is an experiment to help the BBC explore privacy issues around Check Ins and ask whether the technology can enhance our audiences' experience of similar events. By using the latest mobile location technology, Facebook Places and a bit of web design, we've built a prototype that let's our audience share the experience with their family and friends in a way in which they're used to. We decided to use Facebook Places because we believe most of the audience at the event will have an account.

At the BBC I run a number of social media projects and we've been wanting to do something involving the audience at festivals and listeners at home for quite a while. The challenge I set myself here was to find a new and engaging way for the BBC to encourage users to share their festival experiences, good or bad, with the wider world.

The 'Check In' experiment is my proposed solution. It was initially developed on a beer mat in December 2010 but after a late night or two and hard work from the Future Platforms team it was delivered on time. It will only be available to smartphone users with Facebook accounts, attending Radio 1's Big Weekend in Carlisle. Participants are able to share a number of things: which stage they're at, who they're listening to and what they think of the performance. This information will be shared with friends via the user's Facebook newsfeed.

Here's how it works:

The site asks users to verify their location by either checking their 3G cell or using their GPS location. Privacy has been a concern on this project from the outset. We have taken great care in making sure that this site is an example of how to be safe whilst using Check Ins. By default, our site only publishes information and comments to a user's friends via their Facebook newsfeed.

The prototypes database tells us how many people have checked into a performance and how many times they have checked in but the BBC does not hold any users' personal data. The system is completely anonymous, so while we can visualise the numbers of users we're unable to tell who they are. We also signpost that users can amend Facebook privacy settings to decide how and with whom they share this information. As Radio 1's Big Weekend is a ticketed event, we felt that this would be the perfect choice for an experiment of this kind as it reduce concerns of the audience sharing where they are. We also felt that this was a great opportunity to raise awareness with our audience of location privacy. The way we are doing this is to promote how to stay safe on-line as well as providing top tips for anyone using location based services.

From the start, allowing users to say where they were as one of our prototypes was going to be an interesting shift in what we do. We defined a set of criteria to be evaluated and we are carrying out three stages of audience research focusing on qualitative research at the event with 6 young people. They'll be given phones for the day and asked to evaluate the experiment and the promotion.

This has been a truly challenging and thrilling project to work on with some great people but there'll be no rest until the final evaluation in a few weeks. I'll be doing a further post after next weekend with details of how it went. - RM

Richard Morland - Senior Producer Social Media - A&M Interactive

NB: This is an experiment so unfortunately we cannot make it work on all mobiles. If you are attending then your handset will need to have location detection enabled and a browser that can handle HTML5 web code. For example: the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Sony Ericsson X10, Samsung Galaxy and Galaxy S, HTC Desire, Desire HD and Nexus One, and any phones using Android 2.1 operating system and above (excluding tablets and small-screen devices such as Samsung Galaxy Mini, Sony Experia X10 Mini and HTC Wildfire).

Editor's note: a brand new 6 Music show that's designed from the ground up to be interactive - it's even named after a hashtag. The nerve centre for NowPlaying @6Music is the show's blog - SB

I think it's taken a while for 6 Music to find its niche but now it has really found a sound. You wouldn't find bands like Warpaint or Beach House - who have both been really big acts for us in the past year - on the A-list of any other station. We're all about alternative spirit. It can be many things; it can be an artist's sound and/or their influences. A great recent example has been the Jamie XX and Gil Scott-Heron track 'I'll Take Care of You'. It's been on the 6 Music A-list and is a fantastic example of what the network does best - it's a new act collaborating with a heritage artist both in alternative music to create something new.

I've been producing shows here for four and a half years and I'm just about to launch a brand new show with Tom Robinson on Friday nights (7-9pm) called Now Playing @6Music, which is all about the digital conversation with music. Music has never been more digital. A music fan will listen to radio but also probably look at blogs like Drowned in Sound.

They might well use a third-party music service like Hype Machine or Spotify to either play music or aggregate their tastes in recommending music, and they probably get their music news from an online source rather than a copy of NME. So the idea of this new show is to take part in this online music conversation. We're going to create a space once a week where people can share and recommend tracks related to the week's music news, and find out what's happening in the world of digital music. The show will be a weekly iteration of the activity going on 24/7.

I try to go to a couple of gigs a week to see what's out there and make my own judgement on bands who music PRs have 'plugged' to me. For example, there's a group I went to see last week called Holy Ghost who a PR had pitched to do a 6 Mix - the other show I produce. They are quite hipster and signed to DFA - which is James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem's label. On paper they look pretty good - they're on a very cool label and their music has an electro vibe about it - but, as a producer, I needed to see if they've got more legs than just a single.

To do this, I saw them play live with Cut Copy, gauged their popularity on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and was ultimately really impressed, so commisioned them to do a mix. It's all about thinking if they're a career band and, if they're not a household name yet and I'm offered them early doors (which we are at 6 Music), it's always worth seeing them perform to get a stronger sense of their talents and where they're heading. I don't want to get really excited about someone, put them on a show or argue to put their record onto playlist and then see them live and they're rubbish. In my position I've always got to think about bands in a broader sense.

Rowan Collinson produces Now Playing @6Music.

• Listen to the first programme on BBC Radio 6 Music at 1900 tonight.
• The picture shows Warpaint, in session for Radio 1 earlier this month.
• Interact with the show on the show's blog, via 6 Music's Facebook page or the Twitter account.

Editor's note: Jem Stone is the manager in charge of the messageboards at BBC Radio. Listen to his appearance on Radio 4's Feedback from earlier this afternoon - SB

At lunchtime today I was interviewed on the weekly Radio 4 programme Feedback for an item that covered recent changes to the design of the Radio 4 message boards. After the forums were updated last Wednesday afternoon, various threads were started by users upset with the changes and several users emailed the programme frustrated with a number of bugs and overall how the new board was working. The interview was pretty brief so I've tried to summarise. Here are the points that I discussed with Roger:

Why did you make these changes?

The change in look finally brings the messageboards in line with other pages on BBC Online. The pages have been simplified and several new features such as 'sticky threads' - which users and hosts had been asking for - have been introduced. I scheduled the work for Radio 4 as part of a change that's been going on across all the BBC's messageboards over a number of weeks.

Are the problems fixed?

I regret there were some immediate snags to do with font size, opening hours and the ability of users to start new threads. These were all fixed earlier this week thanks to board users identifying them quickly and alerting these issues to hosts. Thanks again for doing so and also helping other users who turned up on the board with similar queries and problems. The remaining batch of minor fixes are scheduled to be rolled out next Wednesday.

Why didn't you foresee these issues before you made the changes?

We always expect a number of bugs and snags when we make a change as substantial as this. It was of course, significantly tested but I'm sorry that for a few days, some users were affected.

David Williams, the product manager for blogs, responded yesterday, and explains in detail the process for launching the changes and fixing problems. There is a further update to the message board software next Wednesday which should fix the remaining bugs.

What about The Archers?

The Archers is Radio's most popular message board and I had scheduled The Archers message board to be upgraded by the end of the month. However we've now put that back until we've done some more testing and I'm satisfied that the latest round of bug fixing is successful. We will obviously be in frequent discussion with Mustardlanders throughout.

Where do message boards fit on Radio 4, alongside recent launches of blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter profiles?

We've had message boards at the BBC for a decade and they continue to be important for Radio 4 programmes such as Word of Mouth. The parodies, instant feedback, and insight we get from the large Archers community is shared regularly with scriptwriters, for example, and are an integral part of that programme's website and production. However, many users prefer to engage with Radio 4 in other ways, on Twitter or on Facebook, for instance.

We regularly update our blogs, making announcements and providing a place for managers to explain their decisions and we think this is an effective way for Radio 4 to interact with listeners and users of our digital services. You can see the full range of ways to join in with Radio 4 on our new Comment page.

It's worth saying that these days budgets are tighter than ever and, for stations where users are increasingly engaging with us in other ways or where the boards are used by a small number of listeners, then we have had to close some.

I'll be keeping an eye on comments here but also over at the board so feel free to ask questions here.

Jem Stone is Executive Producer, Social Media at BBC Audio & Music

• Listen to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCFeedback.
• All of the BBC's messageboards are listed on this page.