PRESSTIME asked: "Where do you think newspapers should stand in the social networking universe? How would you mesh community and traditional editorial content?"

Most everyone on PRESSTIME's panel got this question right, but very few newspaper sites do any of what they suggest. And there's a good reason.

Newspapers (and some others) are still missing the infrastructure that lets social networking happen. The backbone is an effective profile page. When newspapers started registering their users years ago, they often didn't ask people for their names. Instead they asked uncomfortably personal questions like, how much do you get paid? Stop feigning market research, and use registration to start social networking.

I love the school of thought that equates user participation with leading people up a ladder. At the lowest rungs of participation, users might respond to a poll with a yes or no vote. They might recommend a story. Basically, they'll do things that require one click.

After answering the poll, they might read a comment that sparks them to reply. Suddenly they've moved another step up the ladder of participation.

One-click feedback and commenting should become the gateway drugs of user participation. But often newspapers miss the opportunity to build on these activities because they lack an effective profile page.

Whenever I answer a poll, or recommend a story, that feedback should be remembered on my user profile page. It would be nice if the system then compared me to other users and said, for example, I'm 80 percent similar in responses by Jane Doe. But newspapers do nothing with all of this feedback.

Building a successful profile page would lead users to try more advanced forms of participation that we see on MySpace and Facebook. Users might become a "fan" of a restaurant because their picks appear on their profile page. A community group might post more events and jobs because their listings appear on their profile page, and then perhaps smaller groups will use the profile as a surrogate Web page. And if enough groups create pages, then perhaps other users will name themselves as "friends" of these groups. The list goes on and on.

But it all starts with a profile page that aggregates your users' feedback.

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