Is the Future of Publishing on Facebook?

What’s the Latest Development?

With Facebook’s recent purchase of a small e-book design company, some are wondering if the social media giant has glimpsed the future of the publishing industry. The design company, Push Pop Press, is perhaps most well known for its interactive version of Al Gore’s Our Choice which combines written text with photos, videos, charts and graphs. “Facebook has made it apparent over the last few years that it is not just a social network, but an entertainment distributor, too,” says Nick Nilton at the New York Times’ Bits Blog. 

What’s the Big Idea?

The book is perhaps the world’s most successful medium of cultural communication and today, its form and content are undergoing a revolution. Beyond the scaled innovation of the now-defunct Borders Books, which essentially cut overhead costs by making a bookstore into a distribution center, electronic media are making physical books irrelevant to the written word. Will we shortly witness the rise of “social newspapers” where content will be uploaded via a user-friendly interface into an attractive magazine-style format?