Friday 8 March 2013

Facebook pushes News through news feeds re-launch today. Newspapers take heart. This is your future too.



Facebook has gone through another re-design just as elaborate as the "timeline" changes in 2011.

It has overhauled its "news feed" interestingly, with Zuckerberg calling it "a personalised newspaper" not just with text but with imagery. It features blogger images, mobile consistency and multiple feeds.

This is a radical departure. The focus on news stories is more visual, images are much larger (taking 50% of the feed) and more centre positioned with an 'Instagram' feel. Of course, the key here is the ability to 'share' news.

More feeds, and more control of those feeds gives users more options, which you chose to 'follow'. Could be a news feed from family, from friends, about music and so on. Niche news that you want.

Being heavily mobile enabled too, is a good answer to criticisms of Facebook

The continuing journey for Facebook into online news is interesting and another competitor to traditional news orgs. But the fundamental issue around news, the fundamental issue around 'citizen journalism' is trust. You have to trust the source and are these Facebook feeds trustworthy? Not always.

News is pure gold as a content commodity. It draws people in and it retains them. The people in Pole position to provide trusted news are newspapers. And they'll get there with a little belief in themselves and with a mindset change that realises, their newspaper futures are online.

The biggest asset newspapers have, is not on a printing press, it's their websites. And it'll take time for Press men to get their heads around that, but get that, they will.

Do not despair oh ye of little faith.

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