Lately I have noticed that many of the people, blogs, news services and more that I want to track are right inside Facebook. I have even filed them under a list called "feeds."
This is very convient since their updates are integrated right into my stream right beside the people that I follow - friends, family, coworkers, etc. This has tremendous potential. Conceivably the next great media company will be all spokes and no hub. It will exist as a constellation of connected apps and widgets that live inside other sites and offer a full experience plus access to your social graph and robust community features. Each of these may interconnect too so that a media company's community on Facebook can talk to the same on Twitter. Facebook might be the first venue where this starts. It could become a mini news reader for millions who don't care about RSS or Twitter. Over time this may obviate the need to create large news sites. It's easier to create a rich interactive experience there than start a new news site and hope that people come to you. They won't have time to find or visit. In some ways this is a return to the old days of AOL where media companies rushed to develop a presence. Ultimately the web won out. But I wonder if we might see a return here to the days of old now that eyeballs are aggregating on socal networks and the connective tissue exists for them to talk to each other. I do believe it's possible to be successful here. Witness for example the New England Patriots. That said it will be very difficult for existing media companies to make such a move. What's your view?
