FastCompany.com Relaunches as Social Media Network

FastCompany.com, where I used to blog in an incredibly erratic manner, has relaunched with a social media emphasis.

According to Edward Sussman of FastCompany.com's parent company Manseuto Digital:

"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?..."

"It's not a pure social network. A pure social network tries to recreate what Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook calls the "social graph" of a community that already exists. 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."

I haven't really paid attention to the details of the social graph concept but my social networking experiences at MySpace involved a combination of what Edward Sussman is describing plus a much larger network of folks that I met through MySpace.  LinkedIn has been a bit more like the social graph Sussman describes but primarily because I use it in a passive manner, i.e., folks find me, not the reverse.

Lynne d Johnson, who clearly has a lot to do with this project, says:

"Not to be mistaken, we've always had community at FC. In fact, the Company of Friends, the Fast Company reader's network dates back to 1997. What we've done now is basically more elegantly merged the content with the community. Let us know what you think. It's actually a public beta right now, because we know there's still work to do. So I'm definitely looking for feedback."

Here's my incredibly incomplete FastCompany.com profile in case you get on there.