Will social media someday seem as quaint as fax machines?

I had a couple of invigorating conversations today with Wichita State graduate students about the future of media. Cindy Stanford, a PhD Human Factors student, was telling me about her fascinating interest in Human-Computer Interaction, HCI. She introduced me to Friendfeed.com, rheingold.com and quotably.com in the interest of expanding my understanding of social media.

Later in the day I talked with Bobby Rozzell, a former minister who is one of the impressive grad students in the Elliott School of Communication. Bobby recommended a book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. That led to a medium-or-message discussion that reminded me of a long-ago Knight Ridder committee called, tongue-in-cheek, The Edge of Knight.

The idea of the Edge group, circa 1984, was that the people who ran Knight Ridder knew that good ideas were dying because they couldn’t get through the bureaucracy and the budget process. In theory, anyone with a good idea could come to us with a proposal that might be funded independently of the normal process. It didn’t end up working, but I remember one particular discussion about the then hot delivery system — fax machines!

Our wise technical adviser, Steve Landers, urged us to shift our business focus from the whiz-bang platform (we were sure everyone would have one at home someday soon) to the content. He was right, of course. We’re probably at a point where about as many college students will have used a fax machine at home as will have used a typewriter — virtually none.

As journalism jobs disappear by the thousands, at least from newspapers, it’s time to keep a sharp focus on content. What will the audience want, and who will produce it, remain more important questions than how they will get it.

Your choice of magazines

Mass customization appears ready to take another step with Time Inc.’s Maghound, a planned September 2008 rollout of a Netflix-type service for magazines. You pay a monthly fee and choose the magazines you want, for as long as you want them, switching as often as you like.

The report on Foliomag.com says: The pricing for a membership is tiered—three titles for $3.95 per month, five titles for $7.95, seven titles for $9.95, and $1 per title for eight titles or more. Titles that have a non-discounted traditional sub rate of around $19 or more per year are considered “premium” titles and will have an extra $2 fee per month (10-15 percent of titles fall in this category). First-time users will also be eligible for a free one month trial.

In a recent presentation, a Maghound executive said he hopes to have 300 magazines participating by launch. Some major challenges would seem to be:

* Rising paper and postal costs.

* The magazine industry’s traditionally slow execution starting new subscriptions.

* More and more magazine content being accessed on the Web.

Even so, it’s a bold move. I’m going to try it. How about you? The Maghound.com site isn’t yet active, but you can click on a customer service link and they promise to email you know when it’s live.