Hutch Carpenter has a good writeup on the new site that BusinessWeek is hosting, Business Exchange. Frankly I’m surprised that it’s taken media sites this long to realize that allowing comments is not the same as community. While BusinessWeek’s efforts are still beta, I hope they succeed.

Having said that, I still don’t understand why FriendFeed and the other meta-social networking sites are not offering white label versions to media that bring a turnkey social network to the mix. The idea that a few dozen media sites will be able to build their own communities is feasible but the cost and time required to be successful will be daunting. Better yet would be for a consortium of media companies to get together and offer a shared community service.