CNET, the UK's largest online-only publisher, is beefing up its online video offering from today with the launch of CNETTV.co.uk.
Though video has been on CNET sites since 2005, the site is more notable as a further departure from CNET's B2B roots, and spreading from CNET's core tech and gaming areas into music, TV and film.
All the content is free, and created exclusively for the site in bite-sized clips of between 5 and 20 minutes. Packages include live, unsigned bands, product reviews and celebrity interviews.
CNet's managing director Jill Orr said video is "a natural progression" for online publishers, just as audio and blogging were before.
In trying out new formats and features though, Orr said it is important to make mistakes: "You have to recognise what works and what doesn't. That is what is required to work online and stay ahead of the curve. You have to allow people to fail and walk away from mistakes, but those mistakes then have to inform your thinking."
The launch sponsor Hewlett Packard joins tomorrow promoting its Dragon notebook, and elsewhere the site will run display and later on-screen ads.
Measuring audiences, Orr said, is an "essential part of proving the concept of the web" and that publishers "need to show advertisers the credibility of the marketplace".
The publisher has 30 journalists in the UK, some from print and some from broadcast backgrounds, but has occasionally recruited from its readership, taking on one competition winner after he impressed them with his blog from the Consumer Electronics Show.
"We're a young company with enthusiastic and engaged employees. We can point people in the right direction for tools and training and we still hire seasoned, qualified journalists but they have to have passion."
CNET has done well exploiting its core tech audience. It launched as a business-to-business brand ten years ago, and then expanded into consumer media in early 2004 with the introduction of CNET.co.uk, Gamespot.com, Silicon.com and ZDNet.co.uk. It now claims a 29% reach into the UK's online audience, or around 8.7m unique users each month.
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