Channel 4 News turns to crowdsourcing for new website

LONDON - Channel 4 is launching a website that aims to draw up a picture of who is connected to whom in British society, partly relying on crowdsourced information.

Who Knows Who launches today and aims to reveal the connections between politicians, business leaders and other well-known figures, in a bid to show where the real power lies in the UK

— and possibly generate some scoops for 'Channel 4 News' in the process from gossipy toffs wanting to spill the beans on their rivals.

It uses as its starting point the connections between former members of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University. Channel 4 focused on the activities of members in the docu-drama 'When Boris Met Dave'.

The site will be expanded by the team at 'Channel 4 News', as well as drawing on information from third-party sites including mysociety.co.uk. The primary means of building it, however, will be by developing a community of users who can suggest relationships to investigate.

Vicky Taylor, commissioning editor at Channel 4 New Media, said: "Our ultimate goal is to build the biggest network of connections in the UK. We have currently mapped around 6,000 connections but we aim to multiply that many times over.
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