As a weekly print publication with a readership that is global, and yet could easily be considered non-web friendly, there are serious challenges
"Looking at some of the social media ideas we are considering for our readers. Social media is something you develop with your customers," Edwards said.
"I used to be a journalist for 14 years, and went to join IBM to work in the area of social media. One of the things I noticed when I rejoined the Economist was the speed at which social media is being adopted, especially over the last 6 months.
"USA Today, has really switched on all the social functionality that Myspace or Facebook utilises. Our traditional interaction with our readers is called the Letter to the editor. It is an ancient medium, there are 24 letters; they carry the name and the address of the letter writer as that is the convention.
"We now publish all letters online, we get around 1000 a month using a blog technology and readers can comment on each others letters. We will add some discovery tools so that we can develop a community of letter writers. We are taking the traditional way that our readers communicate with us and broadening it online.
"I want to create an experience that reflects back to our readers and for the Economist the letter is a good place to start. A letter is a more considered form of content than a comment. It has to reflect what people expect from a brand.
"Our blogs use a separate content management system from the normal one, this creates ghettos of content. We are now using a technology called Pluck, it will deploy social media to any of your systems and is platform agnostic. These include discovery tools, comments, recommendations like a Digg, and profiling.
"On USA Today, the content that has the most recommendations has the highest place on the site. The community of the site are creating the front page look."
Economist one-year roadmap is based on two thoughts:
1: Interaction with our content
2: Reader interaction with reader
Edwards also plans to launch an external blog for development, "it’s a further way for me to open up to our existing customers and ask for feedback and that is another instance of the power of the blog."
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