Today, Fast Company relaunched its Website as a business social network, putting blog posts, comments, and questions from its readers front and center. Readers are now are encouraged to sign up, create a profile, and “join the business conversation.”
Over the past few years, the print version of Fast Company has been brought back from near-death (thanks largely to the efforts of top editors Bob Safian and Will Bourne, both of whom were editors of mine years ago at Fortune). Now it is trying to shake things up on the digital side. You might have heard that guy Scoble is starting FastCompany.TV.
Next, it wants to tap into social media. A magazine’s readership is not a social network, but it is a community of interest. And Fast Company seems to understand the difference between the two. Edward Sussman, the president of Mansueto Digital, explains this in a post:
First off, here’s what it’s not: It’s not a pure social network. . . . You go to Facebook or MySpace and find the friends and co-workers you already know. The real world gets reproduced virtually. Maybe you meet a friend of a friend.
We’re not that.
We’re an entirely new community of people brought together because we want to share ideas about business. We like business. We think it’s important. Work gives more meaning to our lives. We believe business profoundly helps define our culture.
On FastCompany.com, you can now start your own blog, join a group, post a video, comment on articles, or suggest a “Fast Talk” question to start a debate. Articles from the print publication are interspersed with blog posts from readers, experts, and staffers, and are arranged in a blog-like chronology on the front page.
The idea is to make it easier for readers to interact with staff writers and contributors, and write their own thoughts, which might be featured prominently on the site. Every contribution a reader makes gets collected on his or her profile page, tagged, and placed into one of the eight sections on the site (innovation, technology, leadership, management, design, social responsibility, careers, and work/life balance). The site is built on top of the open-source content-management software Drupal. And it will support OpenID.
During the dying days of Business 2.0, I remember sitting in editor Josh Quittner’s office brainstorming about how we could do pretty much the exact same thing to save that magazine. We never got beyond the brainstorming. Whether or not this will work for Fast Company depends on how smart its readers are and how willing they are to contribute. But any media site that does not listen to its readers and, indeed, allow them to take over the conversation at times, is doomed for the dustbin.
We saw this with the recent relaunch of the Industry Standard, which tries to engage readers to predict future business events. And we will continue to see it moving forward. As a result, mainstream media and the blogosphere will become harder and harder to tell apart. It will just all become part of the bigger conversation.
This is a great move forwards on their part.
Used to love fastcompany then the annoying ads and lack of good content killed it.
http://www.quantcast.com/fastcompany.com/traffic
Well, there’s (almost) nowhere to go but up at this point for fast company. I’d forgotten about the brand until this post.
Looks like they could improve on their SEO:
http://www.fastcompany.com/fas.....uestion-28
Their schema isn’t consistant:
http://www.fastcompany.com/node/645298
Is this based on drupal? If so, reasonably well done, but needs polish…I’d have pushed the live release out another week or two so that there weren’t so many inconsistancies & bugs at launch.
Still, perhaps a little dirt on their shoulders will get more people talking about them than if they launched with a clean site?
Awesome move. Kudos to guys at Fastcompany (esp. Michael K.)
This is a very hard thing to pull off. It still comes down to content first and social features second. I also found the organization of the content confusing. Its hard to separate whats a blog post, comment, feature, or fast talk… which I believe is important when deciding whether its worth your time reading or not.
Nice work though, I like it so far.
Good idea since the written publication will fail soon enough. But, i highly doubt that their readers can generate a significant social network. There are other sites doing Q&A stuff but targeting the right users. Good luck, but not a chance it will ever become meaningful…i give it 12 months.
It’s about time that they put something like this front and center. And it’s definitely a bold move–but a great one at that. I look forward to participating on a regular basis.
eek - i’m on “join the conversation” overload these days… so many groups and such I don’t know what’s what.
Great post! This is really powerful. There should be a flood to follow or they will die.
Come to think of it TechCrunch and FastCompany are on the road to clash. AH, that is really nice because some of the OLD FARTS in the industry will now look to acquire an asset such as TechCruchh. Erick, hopefully, you have negotiated some option acceleration for your unvested shares. After all, Arrington is a lawyer and perhaps sneaky that way.
ps I miss Biz 2.0 magazine!
It looks like the Industry Standard and Fast Company are using the same platform. The sign-up process was nearly identical and at a first glance, it looks like they’re doing the same thing. Either way, it’s great to see. What platform are they using behind the scenes?
@ #8
The site is built using Drupal with a lot of help from the great guys at Lullabot
i’m on “join the conversation” overload these days… so many groups and such I don’t know what’s what…
Cool, I’ve been looking for a new social network to join. There just aren’t enough out there!
I wonder if they’ll let Scoble have 5001 friends…..
What if FastCompany incorporates ISSUU…?
Did anyone else notice their graphic looks an awful lot like Ubuntu’s?
A few issue on launch, like not removing the drupal install page, so when the database was busy I show the config on the site. Luck no one did anything bad.
Why not just give the magazine away for free ?
Me thinks it will be hard to pull off because they are kind of getting in a little late .. There are already many sites with good content and lots of users . I think they are trying to create a product out of a feature .
To pull it off they will need compelling content .
hey - my comment just posted as “Steve” with a link to this site - this is so NOT mine… http://zalpi.com/
antje
Sounds like an interesting experiment–and I’m joining, mainly because Robert Scoble’s there and sounds excited about it.
One part that does not make a lot of sense to me: Fast Company encourages you to start your own blog on their site. But most of the people with the most interesting ideas *already have their own blogs*. And why would a key influencer whose just starting a blog choose to affiliate with Fast Company to help them make a profit (rather than run an independent free blog, for which it will take more time for the accretion of readers, but will maintain your editorial independence)? Am I missing something?
Also, browsing members by Topic, Region or Industry does not work (which seems a little shabby, for a site that’s touting it’s technological prowess: cutting edge Drupal maybe, but missed basic QA…)
I’ll keep coming back if the content’s good and Metcalf’s Law starts to operate (the former seems a precondition of the latter). But I am getting sick of companies and publishers trying to “cash in” on blogs and Web 2.0. Smacks of desperation. (And I’m not counting Fast Company here, for the moment.) We already have distributed networks of like-minded readerships, organized by tags, searchable by Google, and aggregateable in our RSS readers.
For-profit aggregators of blogs and other content (like FastCompany an the new http://provideocoalition.com) really need to add value. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for value-adding for-profit aggregators: I consider the paper version of the International Herald Tribune one of them…)
Just tried to take part in the ‘community’… Keep getting SQL database errors everytime I try to post.
Nice try… I doubt I’ll be back…
Hi all,
Ed Sussman from FastCompany.com here. Dan, I think most people who blog do so because they want their voices to be heard. Only a handful make their living at it — most do it because they love it. FastCompany.com now allows people who care especially about business issues and innovation to find a bigger audience than they probably otherwise would have. And it’s an audience of like-minded people who really care about business, think its important to the world, and that it adds meaning to their lives. So that’s why people might want to blogging or engaging on the site in discussions with our dozens of writers and editors.
On the tech front, loads of traffic today so we hit a few problems with the servers. But we have a pretty large team of developers addressing issues. Indeed, as noted, the platform is Drupal, which is the cutting edge open source CMS these days. We were lucky enough to have Lullabot working with us all though the project — and they literally did write the book. Matt Westgate, one of the partners, is the co-author of Pro Drupal Developers, the main text about Drupal.
Matt, others from Lullabot, and our other dev shop Achieve, and my internal team were working through performance issues starting right about 4 a.m. ET, after we pulled the switch. It’s one thing to test on private beta with 10,000 participants and quite another to throw upon the door to hundreds of thousands. Load testing can’t predict everything. Some stuff worked perfectly well — like the member directory search you pointed out Dan — but became strained as our servers were pushed to the brink. It’s fixed again. Putting out small fires.
We’re pushing to the limit what a modern content management system can do — dynamically generating millions of pages of user and archival content, being updated every few minutes, and personlized for every user! It’s actually quite breathtaking that this stuff can be done. The underlying technology is amazing. Having a grand public debut isn’t the way most websites come to be — Facebook had quite some time before millions of people started poking around. So we’re both fortunate and unfortunate to be in the spotlight.
I encourage you to come back, Becca. There’s some amazing journalism — try Ellen McGirt’s piece on Facebook — the first national magazine to put Zuckerberg on its cover.
http://www.fastcompany.com/mag.....ceo_3.html
Or Chuck Salter on the debate on the ethics of bottled water.
http://www.fastcompany.com/mag.....ottle.html
Chances are, every time you return, you’ll find more rough patches with the technology smoothed over. And more and more features turned on. Beyond question, you’ll find great journalism.
I’m really loving what FastCompany is doing with their business, they obviously get “it”, no wonder I still read their print magazine
@21,
I’d recommend asking the developers to turn on JS aggregation and expires headers. That should help speed up things for readers on slow connections and decrease the load on servers.
BTW, do people like red headlines?
In 2004/5 I had conversations with editors of both FC and Business 2.0 about social networks and social content. 3 years was a long wait but I am glad one of them finally got there!
Shame all I can see this morning is “Sorry. Something seems to have gone wrong. Our team has been notified and they’re on the case. Thanks for being patient!”
Pam
Hi Pam — it seems you overlapped with our scheduled maintenance window last night. We’re back online!
Paul
fastcompany.com
Why is TC covering this? You already announced Scoble going over to Fastcompany. This isn’t news or anything interesting. It’s not a startup?
Mike - why do you let Erik post this crap.
People use facebook and read news from the web. Tony Perkins tried GoingOn a similar product as Fastcompany. That failed. Now who needs another GoingOn.com failure.
I guess they’re big Ubuntu fans?
Erick Good coverage
I question if being innovative for innovations sake is the best strategy for Facebook
I’ve done a thorough analysis of the initial launch here:
http://www.web-strategist.com/.....community/
Engaging, yes. Social networking, no.
Fast Company is about to shake things up again. And why would a key influencer whose just starting a blog choose to affiliate with Fast Company to help them make a profit
Matt, others from Lullabot, and our other dev shop Achieve, and my internal team were working through performance issues starting right about 4 a.m. ET, after we pulled the switch.
The Ubuntu logo is similiar! I just checked it out. But ours came first! It has been the official logo of Company of Friends, our 100,000 member readers’ network, which was founded in November of 1997. Some 200 CoF groups are now all part of the new Fast Company site.
Why use Drupal when it looks like you have to do so much hacking to get what you want? Just build it from scratch? I think PopSugar uses Drupal too and they had to hack away at it as well???
Hmmm..makes me wonder if FC’s thought about how they’re going to turn lurkers (readers) into community participants. There’s the 10% rule when it comes to who participates in a community–which still holds very true. And I’m not sure that the folks who are interested in FC aren’t the same folks who already have profiles scattered all over the ‘net in a variety of business oriented social networks.
Ed does have a point that being part of FC’s social network might give business-obsessed bloggers another outlet for their voices, but who knows how that will translate out for those bloggers. Will it give them more audience and more eyeballs? Only the blogger’s stats will tell the truth to that tale.
Dear Ed Sussman,
I did go back… and later found that my comments had been deleted. I thought the point was to allow people to have their voices heard?
@Exchange Books
Drupal is a highly mature system for building social networking and portal sites. Why re-invent the wheel when a platform is available already? It would probably take twice as long to build the whole system from scratch.
There is a reason why Warner Brothers and Universal Studios have chosen Drupal for their sites.
Also, Drupal development really shouldnt involve hacking, there is a complete system for over-riding the core functionalities. There is also pretty much 1 module for every functionality. All that one needs to do is over-ride some of these functionalities.
Arnold
I agree with Exchange Books, Drupal is great for sites that don’t need to be modified much. When you start customizing in Drupal, things get ugly REALLY FAST. The database layer is not flexible enough, I rather write my own system. User logging, blogs, etc… are not that difficult to rewrite.
I agree that bloggers being expected to launch another blog is lame…
regards,
Graeme
Scott Gentry from http://provideocoalition here. we only launched as a soft-launch this week, however traffic has been very large. Our idea is slightly different from that of Fast Company. I ran several of the largest Pro Film and Video magazines over the past few years and hand picked some of the best writers in the market to all get under one roof.
Publishing dynamics have changed significantly. Content is king and in our model we actually share 40% with the writers. In a typical print model, approx. 5-6% of total revenue (established publication) goes to the editorial line. That includes overhead, benefits, phone, etc. We believe that model doesn’t fly anymore and is perhaps why so many print publications are failing.
It’s all about quality writers. Writers drive content. Content drives revenue. We believe this give the writers a large share of the pie. In fact, our founding editors are shareholders.
This model is scalable and we’ve already started expanding into other areas, and yes…we’re only a week old.
Scott
I’ll engage and we’ll see how it goes…
At fitnessanywhere.com, we are in the process of building an online community for out passionate followers. Without a large development team, we are evaluating a few service providers, including movable types’ community tool, I see Fastcompany’s community structure is similar to turbotax, would love to get some input here.
Most of our readers don’t have a blog - they come because they like our journalism. Whether they engage with the site by answering our daily business/innovation questions, comment on our articles, or by actually writing a blog for the first time, their content will all be aggregated on their personal profiles. That way, you can get to know them by their ideas, not just their resumes. Our membership of business/technology professionals has now topped 100,000. Come check us out if you want to read some great journalism, and engage in a discussion with our staff and our members.
One other thing: Becca J. @35, we don’t delete content unless it’s commercial spam. Maybe you hit a bug? You can find me at http://www.fastcompany.com/user/95053 if you’d like to tell me more about the problem. I promise I’ll look into it.