Well, hello! We’ve all been social networking long before computers, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the like. We just didn’t know it as such. Enter the app.

Remember The Lion King and the Circle of Life? Mother Nature doesn’t rule the tech world but many times, what comes around goes around. As paper publishers strive to meet the social networking challenges, they sometimes fail to recognize that they have been taking baby steps (by today’s standards) every time they answer a consumer’s phone call. And as consumers, the telephone, (now today’s smart phone) is and has long been, our first practical social networking tool.

Now here’s the funny part. As the old media strives to catch up, the aggressors have discovered phone apps as a really new and popular step forward. Traditional paper-publishing contemporaries Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USAToday, Esquire and Popular Mechanics have oft-downloaded apps. Not surprising, social networking giants Facebook, My Space, and Twitter have looked backward. They have apps too. I guess you can say, that is the old media and the new meeting each other halfway.

Jerry Constantino, Feb. 24, 2010

Jerry Constantino was President and Publisher of PJS Publications, a group of 20 special interest magazines owned by VS&A Venture Capital and later, Primedia. He now writes fiction and blogs irrelevantly at itsnutsoutthere.blogspot.com.

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