Business Models for Making Social Media Work

I've been thinking about ways to use the Internet to promote books lately. There are the obvious things to try, a website, MySpace/Facebook/Name-your-favorite social network, a blog, etc. But its clear that the choice of venue for your efforts is not the most important decision. You need to pick the combination of things that works both in terms of your resources and your audiences predilections.

That said, I really like the model Ariana Huffington employs at the Huffington Post. Here's an excerpt from an article from Fortune describing it in a nutshell

Unlike a conventional newspaper that devotes the majority of its resources to basic newsgathering, the Huffington Post instead devoted its scant editorial budget to hiring a few key editors, staff bloggers, and political reporters who post links to the day's stories and imbue the site with a dishy and slightly indignant sensibility, while giving the endless parade of invited bloggers co-star status on the Arianna Show. To date, some 1,600 bloggers have accepted Huffington's invitation to write. They are given a password to log into the site's publishing system and blog at will.

It's an ever-changing stew. On a given day John Cusack, Deepak Chopra, Nora Ephron, Bill Moyers, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Governor Bill Richardson, John Kerry, and scores of other politicos, actors, activists, and academics take to the digital pages of the Post with their views, causes, and beefs.

This model of drawing together a collection of interesting voices into an ever flowing "collage" of opinions and ideas characterizes many of my favorite web sites over the years. A good example I like to point out is worldchanging.org.
Gotta run to the fall festival...