James Kanka

I follow John Gruber like a lot of people out there, which is how I heard of these top design firms Facebook has been aquiring. First it was Sofa, which moved the whole company from Amsterdam to Palo Alto, CA. Then recently Push Pop Press, who was doing exciting and ground breaking things in digital publishing.  People are speculating what Facebook is up to by building an all star team of designers, I have thoughts.

Both these companies had to make large sacrifices to join with Facebook and I don’t think that it was purely for money they choose to do it.  Maybe Sofa was purely for the talent, but I believe Push Pop Press was enticed with a vision to propel their publishing innovations to a new platform.

Despite how beautiful and innovative Push Pop Press was as a publishing platform for books I don’t think publishers were ready for something like it, it required more money and resources to produce at a time when book publishers are getting less.  Facebook however is a different publishing platform than books and magazines. First, it is currently making lots of money, and second, it already takes advantage of the many types of media that Push Pop Press is famously good at integrating and highlighting.  In addition, currently Facebook has the greatest collection of individual publishers and media consumers that has ever existed, us. What a waste to hire Push Pop as just good designers, I think Facebook sold them on the idea of changing platforms and is giving them complete access to change how we publish and consume.  Can you imagine something similar to Flipboard designed by Push Pop Press and fully integrated with Facebook’s massive collection of data on us?

Imagine a dynamic, innovative and beautiful personalized magazine delivered to you everyday.  A table of contents biased on how many of your friends liked it or who recommended it, in fact Facebook could go well beyond your friends and pull from it’s whole community to find content you’ll like based on demographic, likes, or location.  Publishers want your stuff seen? Better start posting the links on Facebook.

This is the future of publishing, I hope that this is what Facebook is investing in.