The Media is Social

After years of beeing more indifferent with reading Fast Company I find this article is igniting som fire again. I have no doubt they are spotting a very relevant development. Right now the ressource shifting tiping point may not be achieved. But the clock is ticking. Thx FC for presenting this overview:


The Media is Social

By: Edward Sussman How FastCompany.com will alter the digital landscape.



Fast Company is about to shake things up again.

Back in 1995, in our first issue, we announced on our cover: "Computing is Social." It became a Fast Company mantra and helped open the eyes of a generation of entrepreneurs to the possibilities of the Internet.

In November of 1997, before social networking on the Web was called social networking, FastCompany.com started the "Company of Friends," dubbed the "Fast Company Readers' Network."

The network featured members' professional profiles, online business discussions that were moderated by volunteer group coordinators, and in-person monthly meet-ups of more than 200 regional groups around the world. (Sound familiar? MeetUp.com was founded five years later in 2002 and LinkedIn followed in 2003.)

As progressive as Fast Company was, serving our online community of about 100,000 members was a secondary mission to creating great editorial content.

But no more.

Starting today, we become the first major media website to tackle the following problem: Can a business publication blend journalism and online community to create something better than either by itself?

We think so. If done right. That's what we've been thinking about and working on at FastCompany.com for more than a year now.

Why bother in the first place? I could get high minded and talk a bit about what my colleague Jeff Jarvis of
 
www.buzzmachine.com/
 
and the director of the new media program at the City University of New York calls the rise of "networked journalism.

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