That was the first thing that seemed strange to me. Why is Block Talk a separate site? Perhaps they should keep the news on XXL, and move the bloggers to Block Talk to spark convo and activity there.

About social network fatigue – the biggest reason I personally won’t be using Block Talk is because I’m already tied to Facebook and MySpace. Perhaps Block Talk should abandon the “general purpose” model and follow the example of Vibe Verses, which is only a video sharing contest.

I agree Lynne, so far there have not been many (if any) examples of print publications transitioning into the “web 2.0″ or social networking space successfully. Publications (print and online) are fortunate to have no lack of content and a grasp on editorial (naturally), the SN/user-generated-content/web 2.0 arena though not so much. Which I think is fine, I don’t expect publications to be masters of this domain. In fact, I think a joint venture with a company who does master “web 2.0″ is more the direction publications should be turning.

@Dara: I agree, I think Janet Jackson did something similar not to long ago with allowing fans and users on her site to design her album cover.

@Hashim: I love the design as well, very clean.

XXL is launching a Hip-Hop themed social network. Now the global Hip-Hop community can “conversate” in peace without that pesky Tom asking what Bathing Apes are. [BW 2.0]The cover art for Wyclef’s The Carnival II: Lauryn Hill Done Lost Her…

I agree with you. Design (A). The trick with the content though is that MySpace, BlackPlanet, Eventful, and others already have artists pages. Even the music industry has gotten hip to building social networks around their artists. And then Vibe, with Vibe Verses (powered by Kickapps) has already shown the power of user-generated music content. I think the success for XXL with this will come in two ways:

1. Not having the social network eclipse the published content. If in fact the impetus for building this SN is because magazine sales are sliding, then you want to bring more readers to your content — not just create a place for them to post photos and videos of themselves. You want the users interacting with your content more. So the trick is to have the publishing content and social networking content feed off of one another and feed one another.

2. The second part of the equation will be for XXL to get ad dollars not only on the strength of user generated ads, but on how those ads perform for the client. I think the performance can’t rest solely on it’s user generated burn. I’m picturing, similar to Current, users creating, voting, and commenting on – but on how the advertising works in traditional publishing models. (I don’t mean print when I say traditional, I mean the traditional publishing site.)

It just seems everyone is launching an SN nowadays, but no one knows how to make those SNs successful (when they are a traditional media company) in terms of bringing the SN and the site’s current platform together. Some sites have abandoned their SN efforts altogether (like Oxygen) for lack of bringing the two services together under one platform. That’s going to be the trick for a lot of companies nowadays, not just XXL.

If you want to sell your magazine, your content, your site — and your only solution is to build a social network, well then you better either be ready for the SN to replace what you already have or figure out a way to tie them all together.

No easy feat of course.

A big test for the site will be luring artists’ marketing efforts away from MySpace and on to Block Talk. If they can trick celebrities into creating free content for them, the site will take off. If they can’t, then the place will be just another message board with extra features.