Will Fast Company alter the digital landscape?

Fast Company recently redesigned its site in a radical fashion. It relegated its editorial content to backseat status and made the homepage an innovative attempt at creating a social network of, and for, its readers. Edward Sussman, the president of the network that runs the site, thinks it will alter the digital landscape.

I’m glad to see a mainstream media company try something truly different. It will allow others to learn from its experience. As I imagine a newspaper trying something like this, I get a headache thinking about the meetings that would be needed to to put all the pieces in place to make such a dramatic shift in strategy.

For a web-centric take on this initiative, check out Jeremiah Owyang’s analysis. My favorite riff:

Expect this to be a success for Fast Company, but they’ll need to act on the previous recommendations. Expect other business publications to quickly launch similar communities, and soon the industry will be inundated with ‘me toos’. The savvy publications will still realize that the web is distributed and won’t limit their community efforts to their corporate domains, but will also spread to where the people are. The savvy fishermen, fish where the fish are.

Can we expect to see newspapers and local news TV stations jumping on board with the “me toos.” USAToday.com took a step in this direction with its last redesign, but this Fast Company has taken a leap off a cliff, not a little step. I wish them the best of luck. It’s time for some dramatic change in this space.