UK2.0 : Britain Upgraded

: Entertainment

BBC iPlayer

The good ol' BBC. Daily radio broadcasting commenced in 1922 and today, the affectionately known 'beeb' is still at the front of its game with cutting edge technology. On Tuesday April 25th 2006 it unveiled Creative Future, which forecast some of the exceptional service we see from the BBC today: a customisable homepage, iPlayer and a host of user-generated-content. All this without compromising the integrity of this internationally loved public broadcast service. Recently, we celebrated iPlayer's 1st birthday with iPlayer Day- loads of great content from the BBC blog, some exciting announcements about the future of iplayer and whole lot of audience participation!

: Social

Last.fm The Social Music Revolution

2008 was a tremendous year for Last.fm, with a huge redesign based implicitly on feedback from its legions of subscribers. Users can now import their listening history from just about anyway, then browse every track they've ever listened to (either on their media player or on last.fm) and then get instant music and gig recommendations.

Created back in the "20th Century", Last.fm is undeniably the social media revolution it claims to be. The office is in Shoreditch (a particularly cool bit of London) and they're a real home-grown success story.

"When we started, the four site programmers lived in tents on the roof of the office. Now, we occupy a whole floor on Baches Street, we seem to have someone new on the team every other week (either here or in New York), and Last.fm is a global music service available in 12 languages."

: Celebrity

Stephen Fry

Oh Stephen, we do adore you. The national treasure knows no bounds in web 2.0. As of today, he has 33,434 followers on Twitter, the vast majority of which he follows back. He only started tweeting in October and that followship number continues to grow. His website www.stephenfry.com, is much akin to a showcase of 2.0 with status updates, a blog, a forum, a club, links to itunes and iplayer and, last but not least, a scrolling update of those replying to @stephenfry.

Nearly all of his work, of which there is an astonishing amount, is showcased on his site. Despite being hectic, Mr Fry still has time to blog regularly and reply to an impressive amount of his followers.

: Public Service

Transport for London

Transport for London has been around for a few years, but 2008 was the year of viral 2.0.

A set of challenging videos from TFL engaged with the online community to spread the word about the issue of motorist & cyclists being more aware when on the road. These can be found on the microsite www.dothetest.co.uk. The original Awareness Test has had over 12 million views and was a huge hit on most of the major social networking sites. The video also made a smooth transition from online to offline and was featured on the US TV show Good Morning America as well as The Observer, Telegraph & on BBC London News.

The creative team behind the video, Altogether Digital and WCRS, recently won the 'Best Use of Viral Marketing' category at the IMA awards.

: Most British

Her Royal Highness on YouTube

With a customised page on YouTube, The Royal Channel has a lot of buzz words: subscribe, video, groups, most discussed, connect, share... The channel was launched at the end of last year and has attracted over 24,000 subscribers and 1.6 million views over the last 12 months. According to the Guardian, Her Royal Highness was "was not immediately acquainted with the YouTube phenomenon" but was tutored in the fine art of viral videos by other members of the Royal family. The Guardian also reported that in the 'unofficial race' between The Royal Household and the White House to get on YouTube, "the Queen has won".

HRH also gets bonus 2.0 points for her recent visit to Google HQ in London and her giggling fit when showed a vid of the famous laughing baby