London, July 1, 2004 - The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) has launched World Forum , an innovative new global interactive forum on the handover of power in Iraq. This forum in five languages is sponsored by BBC with a unique distribution partnership with Associated Press. The technology that powers the World Forum, the NetPulse Interactive Network (NIN), was developed by PoliticsOnline and is now commercially available.

The World Forum e-survey site is linked from numerous pages on the media partner's site or directly at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/default.stm#

"The World Forum is a first of its kind project that enables many different global media companies and their users to offer their opinions and ideas about the handover of power in Iraq in multiple languages and in real time see how they compare with others around the globe," said Phil Noble, Founder of PoliticsOnline. "Nothing quite like this has ever been done before."

The World Forum has a variety of question about the handover and users can answer each question and then also enter their own comments about each question. With NIN's sophisticated but user friendly tools, users can participate in five languages (English, Spanish, Persian, Urdu and Russian) and can view the results by region of the world, language, age and sex. Also, media partners have access to data to compare the results by any country.

"We at PoliticsOnline are pleased to be a part of this globally important project and only the BBC has the vision and reach to carry out such a project," said Noble.

The tools and technology themselves are a major breakthrough as they can be used by any media company or any other type of organization that is interested in gather and understanding opinion and developing many new and different types of user interaction and community building. The measured favorable user responses to these tools have been enormous with some response rates over 50% and click through rates three times the industry average.

This is the third major project that the BBC has launched using the NetPulse Interactive Network tools. Other BBC projects were about the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and Global Migration. Also, this technology has also been used in other major global projects including the Global Vote for the United Nations Summit in Johannesburg and European Union e-Vote for the Greek Presidency.

PoliticsOnline, Inc is the premier global company providing Internet news, tools and strategies for the civic sector - governments, political and non-profit organizations, media companies, unions and corporations. Founded in 1996, it is now the oldest political Internet company and is credited with literally dozens of innovations and industry firsts. PoliticsOnline's products and services are used by over 900 customers and 40,000 subscribers in over 60 countries.