Kevin O’Keefe has published the following article on Lex Blog.. although it seems unlikely that Facebook is the cutting edge of future legal publishing..
By default and maybe by (future design) the social networking site has done a much better job of explaining how social networking and publishing can go hand in hand, compared say, to the efforts of Martindale Hubbell who’s main mistake has been to retain the club like atmosphere of the law by not being as inclusive as it should have been when trying to turn from the world of legal directories to social networking.
O’Keefe introduces his piece by saying
Could we see more law reviews, law blogs, legal newspapers, and other legal publications expanding to Facebook to increase circulation? Maybe even publish solely on Facebook and forgo their own print publication or online site?
This past weekend’s widely discussed story about the Rockville Central, a community news outlet for the DC-area city of Rockville, Maryland, moving its entire operation to Facebook page got me thinking about it.
From Megan Garber of Nieman Lab reporting on the Rockville Central move:
There are some obvious benefits to the all-Facebook approach. Facebook, for one, has a huge built-in audience ? one that is used to sharing and commenting on and contributing content. It has a built-in infrastructure ? one that easily accommodates multimedia. It has, essentially, a built-in mobile app. For an outlet that?s run by people who do that running in their spare time ? that is, publishers who have even less time than most to deal with concerns about site design, server capacity, and other logistical aspects of digital journalism ? Facebook?s insta-infrastructure could free up time that may be spent on more traditionally journalistic endeavors: fact-gathering, conversation-guiding, content-aggregating, community-building, etc.
Brad Rourke, the site’s founder, points out the obvious attraction of Facebook. “Why have a separate site, and try to drag people away from Facebook? Why not go where they are?? There are over 550 million users of Facebook, including 70 plus percent of any community in the country.
Link to the full article here..http://kevin.lexblog.com/2011/02/articles/social-media-1/does-legal-publishing-have-a-future-on-facebook/