Technorati plugs bloggers into CBC

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is increasing its Web 2.0 credentials through a partnership with web search index Technorati to link to bloggers commenting on its stories - the move comes off the back of an ambitious Facebook experiment that was last week co-opted by political lobbyists.

CBC News has added Technorati's blog tracking feature to each of its stories, displaying links to posts written in the blogosphere that reference the corporation's own reports. It also launched a Blog Watch page aggregating all incoming blog links.

The features are a service Technorati previously provided to the likes of MSNBC and Newsweek so that news organisations can involve readers in current affairs discussions and can become a platform for off-site conversations.

The CBC has been particularly busy of late online. The corporation last week redesigned its news site and, ahead of July 1's Canada Day celebrations, recently started an audience participation project with Facebook, the social networking website that has become increasingly - and incredibly - popular in recent months.

But some have complained the Great Canadian Wishlist project - which was heavily trailed across television and radio as well as cbc.ca asking audiences to submit a wish for the nation via Facebook - was "hijacked" by coordinated abortion special interest groups.

A Facebook group the CBC set up attracted almost 17,000 members and may have been influenced by prompting from a group of Catholic social conservatives. However, reporter Mike Wise, who devised the idea, defended the wishlist.

"This was an experiment to see how social networks could work to bring out story ideas, and it’s done that," he said.

“Would people be saying there was a ‘takeover’ if David Suzuki had gone out and asked people to do this? We purposely set out to see what would happen with an unmoderated group. Personally, I think this has been a huge success.”

CBC technology reporter Tod Maffin, a veteran radio journalist, said the project had achieved its goal of capturing people's attention.

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