Yesterday, it was that “all software should be social” post and the day before it was that “social networking is a feature, not a product” post. Today it’s the USA Today adds social networking features to their website” post.

I’m impressed. I agree with Steve Rubel’s review, who thinks those who register should be able pipe in stuff we create elsewhere. I’m completely in agreement. I will register on the site (rexhammock), however, I’m not going to make USA Today the center of my identity — this blog is. If they want more of who I am there, they need to open up a series of RSS tubes.

The new features on USA Today are “powered by Pluck.”

Another thing, and I won’t state the obvious point on this observation, as the URLs say it all: I’ve set up two “user profiles in the past 24 hours” you can find one at the URL twitter.com/rexhammock and the other is at the URL http://www.usatoday.com/community/profile.htm?UID=5cf5ea4f48fa43fb.

Bonus link: Tony Hung thinks USA Today may be getting a little ahead of most non-techno-elitists with its socialification features. I will agree that the last people they should listen to are people like me who will complain about the features they didn’t include. However, I think USA Today should do everything they can to be out in front. For good or bad, they have influenced the newspaper industry — and mainstream newspaper readers — for the past 30 years, in terms of what the experience of presenting and reading a newspaper should be. I’m impressed they are trying to get out in front of the pack online, as well. Sidenote: their owner has some local newspapers that are laggards in the whole conversational media thing.

Technorati Tags: conversational media, social media, social networking