It is great to see Fast Company engage a powerful new publishing media. And I am really interested to see how well the community will engage with this journalism/community experiment.

We engaged a smaller scale trial last year in one of our men's sites. We found that educating the user was critical. Not in describing the overall methadology or suite of functionalities but in creating a mechanism that offered meaningful content within a framework that they were familiar with and confident to use. At the end of the day the user was just looking for all the standard drivers to be covered, entertainment, a forum for their interests, idle amusement etc. 

Engagement was for us the key and as we had a decent base we were able to kickstart a trickle of semi useful content. The volume of dross however was a real problem and really challenged the quality of the editorial tone and content. Moderation of content, be it official, or by the community itself was important and this will apply to Fast Company.

Naturally for Fast Company there will be the normal critical mass issue that will need to be breached. Not just for the generation of content but for the generation of Ad revenue. But I cannot help but wonder just how large the active community will need to be before it really takes off. The Company of Friends base will help but  what of the uninitiated? I am curious about the promotional activities outside of people like myself who were already aware of the mag and site.

One of the crucial issues is if the site is generic enough to attract and grow a non mag audience? Unless the feedback mechanism from the site to the mag is really strong there might be a tendency to alienate the staff writers. Without a clear drive to a facebook scale the shadown lands in between may cause some editorial angst. 

The ratio of reader to contributor will also be an interesting snippet of info but that presumably will remain obscured for some time. 

Still I hope it works out and I sure will have some fun with these nice new tools.

Matt