Forbes.com Gets Social [Media]

Magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes was a famous socialite known for throwing fantabulous parties for his rich pals. The online partner of the magazine bearing his name is getting pretty social too. It’s no boozefest on a yacht, but it invites its readers to a lively get-together.

[End of party metaphor here, just in time.]

Most publications now accept that their web sites shouldn’t just present published content with multimedia accessories. They’re slowly giving up on building “walled gardens” that try to prevent visitors from escaping. What’s evolving is widespread use of social media that engage readers to respond to, evaluate and create content. It’s tricky. It’s scary. But it’s essential.

Forbes.com’s social media features:

Reader recommendations: The site gives readers a nearly equal say in surfacing the good stuff: A “Top Rated” module appears above the fold, just below Top News. Too many sites bury this feature.

Community: Its “Stock Pickers Community,” puts a different civilian investor, with picks and a detailed performance record, on the main stage every day. Community members can choose to “follow” people (like Twitter or Facebook, but with a purpose). In aggregate, the number of followers constitute a group endorsement. It’s easy to see how this can encourage to Digg-like mischief ["follow me and I'll follow you!"]. But hey, welcome to 2.0, where the wisdom of the crowds battles the self-interest of the cabal constantly.

Bloggers: Okay, the Forbes.com bloggers are gathering communities of readers, but someone has to tell these folks to write shorter. Their entries are as long as front-of-the-book magazine articles or in-print opinion columns. That’s not going to work on the web. Five hundred words, two links and out, gang. [I exclude myself from this edict, of course.]

A wiki: The OrgChart wiki is one of the coolest and most wonderfully dangerous features I’ve seen on a suit-and-tie site like Forbes.com. Type a company name and out pops a visual representation of who falls where on the food chain, with little popup notes. Have information to add? Corrections to make? Have at it. It’s like Wikipedia for pod-dwellers and corporate climbers with bad attitudes. Demote your enemies! Appoint your pals to the board! In Web 2.0, you’re in control.

It’s encouraging to see Forbes.com continue to evolve, even after its big renovation last year. That’s the way the web works: Iterate, don’t redesign.

And invite your guests to the party. They’ll misbehave, but that’s part of the fun.

FakeSteve: Good Jobs, but the Act is So Over

Congratulations all around to Daniel Lyons, author of weep-at-your-screen funny blog “written” by Steve Jobs called Fakesteve; the New York Times, which yesterday unmasked Lyons as the blog’s author; and Forbes magazine, which employs Lyons as a “straight” tech journalist and has decided, for worse or better, to give the satirical blog a home on its Web site.

For those joining the fun late, Fakesteve is a 14-month-old, wickedly insightful send-up of the wickedly self-infatuated chief of Apple.

See this entry from about a year ago, which manages in one block of text to skewer Jobs’ semi-mystical peacenik hoo-ha and along the way stick a hatpin between the ribs of two well-ventilated Valley blowhards, slam the pretentions of the Silcon Valley do-gooder mythology, and eerilly anticipate the CNN/YouTube debate question, mishandled so badly by Barak Obama he’s tried to turn his answer into a virtue, about meeting with the world’s most Evil Emporers. 

Also see today’s post-reveal entry, “Damn, I am So Busted, Yo.”

Was Forbes in on the secret? Um, no. Read this earnest whodunnit, also from about a year ago, by Lyons’ Forbes colleague Rich Karlgaard.

I think it’s admirable that Forbes decided to make lemonade, and skirt the whole omigod-it’s-the-digital-Jayson-Blair thumbsuck, by pulling Lyons into its damp embrace.

Of course, with the big media sponsorship, it’s over. Fakesteve has peaked. Part of the fun was wondering who the inspired Mephistophelian behind it was. Lyons himself has, like so many sitcom writers during season two, has begun to struggle to find new plots. 

But far worse, this can’t work as a corporate venture. Forbes will be in a tough position when its reporters wish to speak to the Silicon God Hisself for a “real” story. The blog will be scrutinized for evidence that it’s been hijacked by Forbes’ marketing folks, or that is has fallen into the sleeper hold Microsoft has so succesfully applied to the tech journalist community. (Just wait for the magazine’s first post-reveal positive words on Zune, and a coincidental fakesteve blog slam of the iPod. Just wait.) 

Thanks, Dan Lyons, for the fun. Fakesteve, we hardly knew ye.