Fast Company: A Magazine That Understands Social Media

A friend recently sent me an invite to join a new social network.  These days it is difficult not to receive an invite to join this network or be a user of this or that new application.  Everyone has a some “social” sprinkled in their recipe for success.  What stood out in my mind about this particular invite was the fact that is was an invite to join a magazine’s idea of a social network.  Yes, a magazine. 

Fast Company seems to get the idea that a community built around the content and their brand is a good idea.  This is a bold move for a property that began on the old school way of generated content and the revenue model of advertising.  They see the new generation of how people consume information, and the new movement of the social graph.

Ed Sussman’s article asks the question:

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?

That is truly the new age of thinking among magazines.  I talked before about the New York Times and how it needs to change its way of thinking and how it does business.  Perhaps Fast Company is showing the way of the new media and how old media needs to embrace the idea that their readers and consumers are in control of their own ways of consuming information.

I am going to follow closely with how this new way of sending the magazine’s content and how they include their readers.  Frankly, I am a little burnout on building another network of friends, followers, and the like, but it may be a great idea that is going to be adopted by others.  I guess we need to get used to the idea that we must find new ways to connect easily.  I’ll meet them half way on this one.

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