A Newspaper Network?

There's a social network for every form of media. Musicians and listeners can swap favorite songs and socialize on Last.fm, Pandora, thesixtyone and many others - even MySpace is trying to recast itself as both a social networking site and an online music outlet. Film aficionados can rant about flicks on Flixster or Criticker, bookworms can wax poetic on literature on GoodReads or ANobii, and photogs can browse and publish on Flickr or Fotolog. Oh, there's more.

Newspapers and similar media outlets obviously want to foster a network of community of their own - they attract loyal users and can help generate content. The appeal of these other networks is that they are one-stop shops, though, so one for papers would probably need to deliver content from a wealth of publications. Part of the appeal of such social networks is brand identification and the concept that people express themselves by publishing their consumer loyalties. Flixster visitors segment and differentiate themselves by which movies they identify with the most. The closest thing the news media has might be on Facebook, where users can become a "fan" of any given brand, including ones like the New York Times. Obviously this wouldn't be feasible on a site produced by a single paper.

Is there a market for such a network? Profitability would be - big surprise! - an issue, but if nothing else it could stimulate readership a tad and it could certainly assist in strengthening the bonds between a paper and its readers.