Beatles play to young crowd with Web siter

The Beatles will launch its first official Web site this month, 30 years after the group split up, a representative for the band said last Wednesday. The site, Thebeatles.com, will go live Nov. 13 and will be the band’s only official presence on the Internet among a flood of unofficial fan sites.
“Over the past few years, given the thousands of unofficial sites, there has been much speculation as to when the Beatles would create their own,” the representative said. “With a new CD coming out, it is the right time to put them on the Web and into the dot-com era.”
The launch of the site will be tied in to the release of the band’s latest collection, simply titled “1,” which features all 27 of the Fab Four’s No. 1 hits. The band’s management has been resistant to the idea of setting up a Beatles site until now but hopes the new venture will appeal to a younger audience more familiar with using a computer than an old-fashioned record player. “They thought it was the right way to show the Beatles to a new generation,” the representative said.
The band’s three surviving members, Sir Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as well as John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, have all contributed to the site. Despite other celebrities falling victim to cybersquatters — people who register the domain names of famous people in the hope of making a quick profit — the Beatles had no trouble registering the name of their choice, the representative said.
The site will allow visitors to watch footage of the Beatles’ performances, contact each other and take virtual tours through the famous Abbey Road studios where the band made most of their music. A team of Web designers has been working on the site for a year. While the content will initially concentrate on “1,” new aspects will be added over time.

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