Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Earlier this year in , we outlined our plans to deliver a more personal Â鶹ԼÅÄ - one that’s tailored for you, helping bring more of the content you love from across the Â鶹ԼÅÄ. I wanted to use this post to give you an update on what’s been happening since then, highlight some of the great new features, functionality and activity that have gone live, and give you a sense of what’s coming up.

Over the past six months, we have been steadily introducing a range of features to key areas of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ. From the My News section in the Â鶹ԼÅÄ News app to My Programmes in Â鶹ԼÅÄ iPlayer, recommendations on the Â鶹ԼÅÄpage to notifications from Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sport, and tailored newsletters across the Â鶹ԼÅÄ, we are making it even easier and more convenient for you to find, read, watch and listen to the content you care about.

We are starting to see that the combination of the new features we have launched are really improving the experience of you, the user, too. Many of you have registered with the Â鶹ԼÅÄ for the first time and we have also received thousands of useful comments and feedback on how we can keep improving our services.

This week, the new Â鶹ԼÅÄ Â鶹ԼÅÄpage came out of beta and went live across mobile, tablet and desktop, bringing the best of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ to the millions of visitors to the Â鶹ԼÅÄ, online.

Just as it has always done, the Â鶹ԼÅÄpage will bring you the top breaking news and sports stories, must-watch TV and radio programmes, and so much more from across the Â鶹ԼÅÄ, all in one place – but now, you will be able to tailor the homepage based on the things you love. Some of those exciting new features include:

• setting your location to ensure you can see news and weather that’s local to you across all your devices;
• personalised recommendations of TV programmes you might enjoy based on other programmes you've watched on Â鶹ԼÅÄ iPlayer;
• allowing you to customise which of the forty new content collections you feel are most relevant to you;
• ensuring nationally relevant content for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is easier to discover;

Andy Pipes, Executive Product Manager for the Â鶹ԼÅÄpage has also , so head there to find out more, and Clare Hudson, Editor for Â鶹ԼÅÄpage explains more about the editorial strategy in her .

Â鶹ԼÅÄ iPlayer also recently  that start to transform how you can find and watch you favourite Â鶹ԼÅÄ TV shows.

These include the new My Programmes section – a new place on iPlayer that’s just for you. By signing in on the website or app, all the programmes you have favourited, started to watch, or upcoming episodes will be saved in one place, across all your devices. Soon, we’ll also start to recommend other programmes we think you might like to watch. Â鶹ԼÅÄ iPlayer also launched cross device pause and resume, letting you watch a programme on one device and seamlessly continue watching on another, and live restart on your TV.

If, like me, you are a sport nut, then you will love the new Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sport notifications which ensure you never miss anything important for your favourite teams. Football goals, line ups and result went live at the start of last season. Cricket alerts launched in time for the Ashes and that amazing Broad 8 wicket haul. There are now more than a million of you signed-up to receive alerts across Football, F1 and Cricket. And now, in time for the Rugby World Cup, you will never miss a try or a result for your favourite national and local teams for both Rugby Union and Rugby League. And of course you will always be notified when the games start so you can ensure you watch, listen or follow the live service online with the Â鶹ԼÅÄ. You can find out more and .

Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sport also launched their  at the start of the season. We want to encourage more online participation and this is a great example of something we’d like to do more of across the Â鶹ԼÅÄ.

We have also started to improve the way we bring our other digital services to you to ensure you never miss our content. Those of you who have already signed up for the or the should have already seen significantly improved content, frequency and presentation. And, within the next few weeks we will start to be able to personalise these as well. So, if you love the Great British Bake Off, you might get to see a different selection of recommended or promoted shows than those of you that are more fans of Big Blue Live.

Ensuring the right balance between the editorial and personal

With all of these developments, one of the key areas for us at the Â鶹ԼÅÄ is getting the balance right between making the Â鶹ԼÅÄ more personal and tailored to you, and ensuring that we also include what’s editorially chosen and curated by us, building on over 90 years of expertise.

We want to help transform your experience of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ online by linking up our content and launching new features and functionality to help serve each and every one of you better, and to make it easier for you to find and discover content you may love from across the Â鶹ԼÅÄ.

Personalised features won’t replace our editorial expertise or ability to brilliantly curate content for you. It will complement it. And on those important occasions when breaking news needs to get to everybody, we will still ensure everybody gets to see it.

What else might you expect in the coming months?

Over the coming months, we will continue to develop and roll out personalised recommendations across Â鶹ԼÅÄ Online. We will roll out personalised news, sport and TV recommendations, and will start to also factor in what we see you loving when you press the heart buttons. There are also a range of new and exciting features coming soon that will allow you to customise different areas of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ. I will keep you posted as and when these launch.

And, our plans for a new Â鶹ԼÅÄ app continue in development and we are currently conducting a range of audience testing. There is still work for us to do and we will only launch this when we are ready and when we feel the audience feedback is strong enough.

And finally…

I said we can’t do everything we want all at once, and we want to learn from you as we go, focusing on the things that matter most to all of you. We are now trialling different experiences in our products and scaling up as we learn. Test and learn is our mantra and will continue this mode of agile delivery.

So for now, if you want to benefit from some of these exciting new features, please sign in or sign up so we can continue to deliver the best content and services in the world to you and ensure we help you stay informed about the things that are important to you. And keep your feedback to us coming.

Phil Fearnley is Director, Â鶹ԼÅÄ Â鶹ԼÅÄpage & myÂ鶹ԼÅÄ.