Facebook is a Publisher

There has been a lot of press around the recent acquisition by Facebook of Push Pop Press, an iPad book creator founded by two former Apple employees, Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris. They are best known for publishing Al Gore's recent Our Choice, a book about climate change. I was actually surprised to hear about this particular acquisition. The company is very young, and while the technology looks cool, I wasn't totally blown away by it when I first looked.

But I haven't looked at the book that closely, and the fact that they won the prestigious Apple 2011 Design Award at the WWDC in June says something very significant about what they have accomplished.

Facebook is characterizing the acquisition as a talent and technology play, which does make a lot of sense. So now they are known in the tech world as people who are smart enough for Mark Zuckerberg to hire them!

From the statement:

"We're thrilled to confirm that we've acquired Push Pop Press, a startup whose groundbreaking software challenges the way people publish and consume digital content," Facebook said in a statement.

"We can't wait for co-founders Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris to get started and for some of the technology, ideas and inspiration behind Push Pop Press to become part of how millions of people connect and share with each other on Facebook."

The statement goes on to say that "Facebook isn’t planning to get into the digital book business..."

The fact is, Facebook is already significant publisher, with a huge audience. The way I read this acquisition, Push Pop is a different kind of book and Facebook is a different kind of publisher. Facebook has a global audience of 700+ million people (at this writing) to which it can push content of many forms. Facebook is, as an example, the defacto "publisher" of Zynga's games, if you look at the way their agreement is structured and where the game company's revenue comes from (this is now all over the web due to Zynga's planned IPO).

There are many moving parts in the publishing supply chain. I've been reading numerous analysis pieces lately about the changing role of the publisher, and how their ability to move books has been diminished by a variety of forces in the marketplace and technology. Clearly, "traditional" publishers are working very hard to re-invent themselves. One example that makes it quite clear here in New York is to look at what software developers are working on. Two years ago, developers in New York media engagements were working on the web. Today, they are working on iPad and mobile.

Back in early 2009 when David and I started this blog, one of the big trends we saw emerging was the idea that content increasingly originates on the web, then may or may not be printed. This acquisition is very much an example of that trend, and it's starting to accelerate. This kind of paradigm shift is a big reason why traditional publishers are freaking -- their employees mindsets, their workflows and their technology all target print intrinsically and first. I will look for some additional examples of this and do another post in the near future.

Facebook is clearly a lot more than a publisher porting their content to new technology platforms. Do they need to make "ebooks"? Why should they, when they can re-invent "publishing" by pushing rich content to a gigantic audience in a new, exciting and interactive way? This acquisition of Push Pop Press is only the beginning.