As a beta tester of Fast Company's new business community site, I am fascinated
on what they are trying to do, it's a little bit of everything: LinkedIn,
Facebook, iGoogle. So far it seems it works for me, its interface is intuitive,
I understand what goes where and where I would find things and the different
things find me. Of couse, for those of use that have been around long enough,
know it’s the second generation Fast Company community site, after Company of
Friends.

This Site has everything you would want of a great community site of the
second generation. A job very well done! What I very much appreciate is that I
am not bombarded with advertising on every page, and the ads are are not
animated/video ads, that flicker in front of my eyes and I am able to
concentrate on the content - very much a plus. Now I just discovered that I am able
to create my own blog on the fastcompany.com domain, which I find quite
generous. The “beta” in front makes it bit geeky, and for a techie like me,
there is no downside to it. (Google had their Gmail site in beta for about
three years, before they went public with it, hadn’t they?)

After about five month intensive explorations on Facebook I am now relieved
that I am again allowed to keep my business content organized on one site.
Bookmarks, newsletters, feeds, and contacts: everything is about business, business
technology, business ideas. Now these things don’t intermingle anymore with my
private and semi-private and my charity interests like they do now on
del.icio.us or on Facebook. I still am very much able to have them ‘bleed’
through by using the feeds but the collections and the administration is now
separate. And I very much like that. Fast Company I like that the “Company of
Friends” are back! Thank you! And this Blog will not only be about Web 2.0,
which many people still have not embraced yet, but also about how Fast Company
is a major player in shaping Web 2.0 for business people of Gen X and Y and
hopefully a bit of the Boomers, too.

Pauli Systems
web development | web strategy | web2.0 integration
www.paulisystems.net [1]