The standard, old-school model for publishing is that the experts pick which stories are the most important — that is, which get top billing, which get more coverage, which get larger headlines, which get images, etc.

To some extent, the socialization of the web is wearing away at that. Now we care a little less what the editors think is important and care a little more what our friends / colleagues think is important.

Of course there will always be editors, and they will always have an important role to play. But (and this is nothing new) website designers need to accommodate a world in which the home page is not the main visitor entry point, and the users want to decide how they see and arrange your material.

An obvious example of this concept is the Facebook box that many sites are adding. It’s a neat feature. It allows you to see what articles on the site your Facebook friends have commented on or recommended. I look at it frequently.

But it’s usually way down on the right side of the page, below the ads. I think it makes sense to give the user an option to have that feature (or something like it) higher up on the page. Maybe even as his custom entry page.

There are some sites that I don’t want to spend much time on, and all I really want to know is what my friends are looking at. I would rather see the Facebook box first.

Also, I’m not Facebook friends with very many of my professional colleagues. And I don’t really want to be, because I don’t think they need to know about my personal life. This is a weakness with Facebook, in my opinion. There’s a need to have different online personnas for different situations.

I’m not just Greg. I’m Greg the publishing professional, Greg the husband and father, Greg the homebrewer, Greg the neighbor, Greg with certain crazy political views, and so on. I don’t play Mafia Wars any more, but if I did, that would be a completely different set of “friends.”

And if I did play Mafia Wars, I wouldn’t really care what Washington Post articles they’re reading. I want a different group of friends’ opinions about different sites.

If I’m on minonline.com, I want to know what my publishing colleagues are thinking, and if I’m on beeradvocate.com I want to know what my homebrewing friends are reading. The Facebook box isn’t adequate for that.

This is a complicated challenge for the web designer, but I think it’s where we need to go. I have a different set of interests and a different set of peers / friends on different sites. The site design needs to allow me to see the content based on those choices.