With the improved FastCompany.com we have vastly improved tools for integrating our community with the publishing arm of the website. With this rejuvenation, the online community is becoming as much of a priority as the site's editorial content. This means that your voice will carry as much weight as the magazine and online staffs' writers. And you'll be able to connect with one another based on the quality of your ideas, not just resumes.
If you're worried that this will be just another LinkedIn, rest easy. Quite the opposite -- we have a tradition going back many years that connects people based first and foremost on their business ideas. Now those ideas will be front and center on FastCompany.com.
We've spent many months building the new site but it's not done yet --- while we've polled many of you, now we need beta testers to really put the site through its paces before we bring it live to the public.
Here are a few more details: all Company of Friends groups and profiles will remain, but the options for participation on Fast Company.com will dramatically increase.
Members will not only be able to create and join groups and post events and messages, but they will also blog for themselves or their group, micro-blog about questions posed by our editors, pose questions to the community, send and receive private messages, partcipate in discussions, rate content, and more. This content will be prominently featured on our homepage and throughout the site, alongside our Fast Company articles and blogs, on a daily basis. It will also go out on our RSS feed to many hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
What's Next?
In the beta phase, current COF membership will allow you to test out the site's new features and add more information to your profile. For all other beta testers, membership will be invite only during this period. Beta testers will be an integral component of providing you with stable core features. We'll be looking for honest feedback during this period.
What Happens to Groups?
Original CoF groups will be moved over, as will the existing moderators, but we are also looking for new groups and new group moderators related to the site's core eight topics: innovation, technology, leadership, management, careers, design, social responsibility and work/life. These will be excellent forums for contributing ideas that will form the basis for meeting people and making business connections.
What Will Moderators Do?
Group moderators are the main contact of a group. They steer the exchange of ideas with interesting topics while ensuring that all interaction within the group adheres with FastCompany.com Codes of Conduct. You don't need to have a large amount of time on your hands to do this, or be an expert in your field, but you do need to be dedicated, excited to meet new people, and able to carry on a great conversation.
While you'll be able to set up your own groups as soon as the beta launches, if you'd like to be considered as a moderator for one of the core topic groups of FastCompany.com, please send me a message. We are also looking for expert bloggers to be featured within these core topic areas and we'd love to hear from you about that, too.
I look forward to talking to all of you in the coming months as we conduct online and in person discussions about what we're doing.
Best,
Lynne
Senior Editor, FastCompany.com
Joseph,
I just entered the title of the article that you were looking for into the search box and got this results page: http://www.fastcompany.com/search/fc?filter0=%22Fueling+The+Future%22
The article you were looking for can be found there.
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Lynne d Johnson
Senior Editor/Community Director, FastCompany.com
Here is our FAQ page FAQ to learn more about how to use the site.
Here is the contact page in order to contact various departments of the magazine and website Contact Us
Finding the magazine:
You can easily go to the footer navigation on the site. Everything you need is there. There's even a section for Magazine. Besides that, you can find the current issue on each page of the site. Just look on the right hand side of any page -- there's a box on the lower half of the page with the magazine cover and a link to the latest issue.
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Lynne d Johnson
Senior Editor/Community Director, FastCompany.com
I know I'm late to the table here, but.........it's only because I couldn't for the life of me figure out where/who/how I was supposed to say anything. Big problems, as I see them; very "unFastCompany-y" in terms of clarity, ease of navigation, readily available help or direction... oye. I would be happy to be more constructive; please email me (if you can even figure that out.)
Not impressed, and this from a HUUUUUGE fan!
Hello Lynne,
I apologize in advace if I "just don;t get it", but the site is very difficult to use.
First point of confusion:
I'm a print subscriber and wanted to find a electronic copy of an artile I read in the February issue so I could email a friend.... forget it.... I tried to use the search feature and the article was no where to be found. Finally I exited FastCompany.com and went to Google... inputed the article "Fueling The Future" (February 2008)... bingo! It gave me a reference link to the EXACT location on your site an I pulled the article.
Second Point of Confusion:
I try to send a simple email to the "site" to report confusion #1 above and the only link that looks close is "Feedback" which puts me into sort of a "blog limbo"... I found a page that invited me to send a message to you, but when I clicked it I got an advisory message that I had to add you to my Outlook Contacts, which I clicked "yes" to... but nothing happended... with still no way to send you an email I couldn't another easy way to send a note so I tried to post a message on this blog... is this they way it's supposed to work?
Please advise me on what I'm missing so I can easily search the site and send simple messages.
Thank you!
Yuck. I miss a week on Bloglines and I login today to catch up and find a mess for my Fast Company feed. I just want the FCNow blog back. Does it still exist and I just can't find it???
Joel we are definitely addressing both performance in workflow. This is still public beta that we're in and we work in an agile infrastructure. And we're also working on the theme issues with how comments and such are displaying. We will continue to work with the users to implement many of your suggestions, so keep them coming.
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Lynne d Johnson
Senior Editor/Community Director, FastCompany.com
And could you change the input filter to preserve double space between paragraphs for readability, or was the removal of line breaks the desired behavior?
Just asking and checking.
It's great that you are using Drupal as your CMS, but you may want to add some hardware since this site is running pretty slow. It isn't a critcism, just an observation coming from a developer that thinks Drupal is an excellent CMS and community.
Unfortunately, I encountered a workflow issue. I entered my comment, while not registered, and after submit, I was brought to the register page.
So far so good.
But after registering, I discovered that my comment was neither submitted nor saved somewhere. I would expect the comment to have been added to the thread I was commenting on after registration.
If that isn't possible, I would expect a notice that registration/login is required before entering my comment.
Nobody enjoys having their work automagically dissappear.
Thanks and good luck with your new version of the web site.
Hi Aavalyn, Fast Company guy here: Your questions about member blogs on Fast Company.com are very importanr. Member blogs on FC are available to the general public. There is an RSS icon on your profile. Any content you contribute to the site, including your blog, can be subscribed to on an external feed via that RSS link on your profile. We are going to improve this link so it gives readers several choices among the main readers -- coming soon.
The question as to whether to facilitate imports of blogs from Typepad or Moveable Type is interesting. We want an open dialogue but we also want people to contribue on subjects that are focused on Fast Company. We're worried that wholesale import of blogs may dilute our site focus. What do you think?
The benfits of blogging on FC are tremendous. Your blog instantly appears in a community with 100,0000 members and one million monthly readers. Built in marketing! Editors pour through the blogs to find interesting ones to feature on our homepage and topic pages; widgets on the site feature recent content, including member blogs; member blogs appear in our site search and also get the extra Google juice of being associated with a major site with thousands of link backs; and members view each others profiles all the time while going through the site -- more potential readers!
If you want to build an audience for your blog, and you think it's a good fit for FC, you'll get great traction on our site.
Regarding the member blogging, if one has established blogs, say with Typepad or Blogspot, how would these connect to FC, if at all? Are member blogs within FC available to the general public? And, if one has an established blog, especially one with its own domain, what benefit would there be in blogging via FC?
Just wondering...