Just over a year ago, I joined BusinessWeek to lead the technology efforts around a new product called Business Exchange. One year and many agile development cycles later, the product is live and gaining activity.Business Exchange started with a simple vision statement. Aggregate content from business oriented sources, organize them into business topics that users can create, and prioritize the most important articles based on user activity. If you visit the Business Exchange home page, you will see this working with newsworthy topics like Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Credit Crunch as the most active along with community favorites like Social Networking, Apple, and Business Law.

But Business Exchange goes beyond that simple concept. We all read, bookmark, and share articles as a business activity and we use browsers, bookmarking tools, and RSS readers to help us with these tasks. But by using Business Exchange, the articles that you save or comment become part of a personal knowledge base. I use it personally to capture articles of interest in topics like Agile Software Development, SaaS, and Travel 2.0. Also, I get to see the best articles based on the actions of a business community and network with the topics’ top contributors.

Do you believe in the phrase, “you are what you read”? Your profile on Business Exchange highlights your most recent contributions and top topics. It is your business persona and if you’re looking for a job, a contractor, or a small business owner, then this tool can help you promote yourself based on your business interests. The application also allows you to connect with your LinkedIn profile. See my Business Exchange profile.

But the best part of this product is like the articles, topics, and community will change over time, so will the product. As part of our agile cycle, we are making frequent releases of new features and enhancements to the product.

So what’s your Business Exchange topic?