In April 2007 a round-table debate took place on bbcpersian.com between eight participants from Australia with Persian backgrounds.

The debate was about the problems of marriage for Iranians in Australia. Part of an initiative to connect Iranians living all over the world, it was hosted on a special section of the website. The picture galleries, interactive forums and other user-generated content was viewed by over 30,000 users in one week. It enabled Persian speakers all over the world to engage in conversations about life away from the homeland.

One of BBC World Service's most visited websites before it was blocked in Iran in December 2005, bbcpersian.com was also one of the most popular news websites in Iran itself. It is now used mostly by Persian speakers outside Iran but there are unofficial reports of many Iranians being able to use the site from inside the country via proxy servers.

Usage inside Iran doesn't vary that much from usage outside the country. Visitors mostly use bbcpersian.com to keep up to date with news about Iran. The most popular topics are political and social issues, but entertainment news rates well, too. There's a great appetite in Iran for blogging and interactivity - perhaps in reaction to constrains on self-expression. Users from outside Iran watch more video footage, which could partly be due to higher speed broadband connections in the US, UK and Germany where many of the diaspora users of bbcpersian.com are based.

As well as the Persian/Australian project, diaspora life in Canada has featured on the site. Initiatives such as these provide a true representation of life in a new country for diaspora audiences, building BBC World Service's unique opportunity to link people around the world in the global conversation.