John A. Byrne is the executive editor and editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com. Byrne previously launched the magazine’s ground-breaking rankings of business schools, best and worst corporate boards, and most generous philanthropists. He is also the author of eight books, including The New York Times best-seller “Jack: Straight from the Gut”, with former General Electric Chief Executive Jack Welch.

John was extremely gracious to provide us with his thoughts, which he wrote mid-flight from his BlackBerry. His insights about social media, online collaboration, business writing, and the future of journalism will certainly encourage and inspire you.

Please subscribe to the “Cover Stories” podcast and send John a message on Twitter. You can also join Business Exchange and add us to your network while you’re at it.

1. The BusinessExchange has grown to be a major part of BusinessWeek.com. What has been the secret to its success?

The Exchange is unique. No one does what we’re doing in our business category or outside it. I think that’s one major reason for its success to date. The other is that it meets the information needs of a business professional who wants to stay on top of his or her industry, company or discipline. Today the amount of news and information available on the Web is overwhelming. The Exchange allows you to quickly and easily get your arms around the most useful information you need, whether it’s on your company, your competitors, or aspect of your job. If you’re in human resources, for example, it will bring to you the latest news, feature stories and blog posts on stock option programs, human resource best practices, or the administration of benefits. And it will do this through intelligent human filtering so that a community of smart people in the topic will help us determine what the most valuable information is. That saves you time and gets you to the most important content you need to know to be the smartest person in the room.
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