What makes this eastern in style is that you led up to the point of the story with a lot of conjecture and supporting evidence for the concept and then delivered the thesis, then went on to support the specifics of the story with examples such as FriendFeed.

If I'm writing this post, I would use your thesis, use FriendFeed to support and tie in other specific examples such as some of the things that WPNI (WashingtonPost.com) is trying or even suggesting Disqus (which you are using here for comments) as other supporting evidence of the addition of social channels to traditionally understood content.

I give you an A-. Don't sell yourself short.

Well done

I think that's .. $2 in fancy words right there!

In the past few years though, there has been a steadily and perhaps even logarithmically growing trend for adding a social channel to more traditional publishing mechanisms that have already existed. Where once you might have visited a web site to read the news of the day, you now can comment on the news, or read the comments of others. This once-intrinsic ability is starting to come back into its own, and in a big way.

This simple concept has seemingly been thought out from a small service to a burgeoning community with tens of thousands of folks interacting continuously with it. It would seem to be a logistical nightmare, but on the surface FriendFeed does a very admirable job of maintaining a simple, responsive and, more importantly, engaging and addictive demeanor.

Well done.