Q. What does it do?
A. BBC Online has over half a million pages of content covering just about everything you could ever want to know about, from music and sport to education and the arts. It is a rich package of news and information that doubles as a lifestyle site offering advice, entertainment listings and gossip. It also contains highly maintained interactive sites dedicated to the BBC's most popular programmes, including EastEnders and Changing Rooms.

Q. How long has it been around?
A. BBC Online launched in November 1997 as a collection of programme-related sites. In November 1999 it was relaunched in a new format under 20 different categories to make it easier for users to find their way around the site.

Q. How much money has the BBC invested so far?
A. About £90m of licence-payers money. BBC Online was launched with an initial investment of £30m and the corporation has since spent about £30m a year on the service. This represents about 1% of the total licence fee income - the equivalent of several years-worth of EastEnders.

Q. How much is it planning to spend?
A. The BBC is tight-lipped on this one, but given that it is continuing to expand it is reasonable to assume that investment will continue at the current levels at least. Last year's annual report shows it spent £32m on the site.

Q. How well is it doing?
A. Very well indeed. BBC Online is the most popular site in Britain and the most-visited non-portal website outside the US. In the UK it receives approximately 200m page impressions every month and latest figures give it a 25% reach in the UK, which means a quarter of the internet-using population of the UK visits the site.

Q. How many staff does it employ?
A. BBC Online employs 450 dedicated staff across the country, from designers to journalists to technical staff.