Economist.com plans global social network and UGC: LinkedIn?

The Economist is drawing up plans for a social network following the decision to invest in its site and socialise its content.

The magazine wants to develop a major portal for its 3m readers and create what it calls "a conversation between them".
The move into social networking comes as the weekly current affairstitle - which has a global readership including 45% in the US -launches its first online video.

Economist.com publishing director Ben Edwards told NMA that themagazine is determined the website should be used to engage with themagazine's readership, which is currently growing by 13% a year.
"We want the website to host a truly global conversation among anincredibly bright and influential group of people," he said. "This willinvolve anything that allows the audience to participate with thecontent and each other," he said.
"It will include threaded conversations, connections, independentgroups, social networking and profiles. It will certainly includeself-affiliating groups."
Edwards said the spread of social networks into the mainstream lefta space for more specialist sites with a similar functionality.
"As generic social networks grow, there's an opportunity for brandswith a narrower audience to adopt some of these technologies," he said.
"We don't have a fully developed plan yet but the idea is to throw the site open to the reader."
Earlier this year Edwards took most of the existing content out ofthe area reserved for subscribers. He has also been pushing the site'saudio content, which now sees 1.2-1.3m downloads a year.
"We're launching an audio-video centre imminently," he added.