It’s a wonderful example of what can be done with creative focus, no legacy panic and Cloud based software.

It’s a little harder to make the case to companies that employ journalists that this is something they should incorporate in their Web sites.

I’m not convinced that it’s possible or even desirable for a newspaper to, say, launch its own social network. The NY Times *might* pull it off with TimesPeople, but as Martin points out, there’s not much “there there” at the moment.

I’m quite intrigued though, by the possibilities of integrating content and user contributions via existing social networks such as Facebook. Why try to build your own network when your users have already formed them … and when Facebook now allows people (through its Facebook Connect service) to log into *other* sites using a Facebook ID and to do things on those sites based on their social connections.

A student innovation project that I directed this fall came up with a demonstration site called News Mixer that takes advantage of Facebook Connect (and some other cool features) to reinvent the way people have conversations around news.

For more info, check out the site at http://newsmixer.us …
… as well as this overview of the project: http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/studentwork/archives.aspx?id=110531 …
… and my posts to the PBS Idealab blog about the project: http://www.pbs.org/idealab/rich_gordon/

In other words, the ‘net would become a common commodity — as common and necessary as electricity — and news organizations had better prepare for it.

He turned out to be an accurate, if somewhat unheeded, prophet.