How Facebook should tackle News

June 7th, 2018

Facebook killed off trending news – and now is looking to support live broadcasting.

My sense is they’re going down the rabbit hole again.

The problem with their initiatives is that they aren’t playing on the strength of the platform, to help inform and create a better experience.

What is it about Facebook that could improve the news experience? 

Thats the product question they need to answer.

My take is that they need to look to Twitter as a reference. They organise news topics and highlight the top tweets in their explore tab. It’s not rocket science but it does exactly what I want as a user, the Twitter take on a story.

This is a good model for taking the best of Twitter to be additive to the news experience.

 

How Facebook could tackle this

When a News event happens, trigger it as an event and let people contribute. Make them the hero’s. Lift them up – and elevate them.

What people share on Facebook is more direct, more personal. Twitter is more of our public face. So embrace that.

Then for bonus points, personalize that view for each and every user:

  • Share opposing points of view.
  • Share voices I don’t often hear
  • Elevate the official references of facts

Finally, embrace the small, sometimes for a news story, there is only 2-3 unique points of view worth sharing. That is ok. If you’ve delivered a great experience, the job is done.

 

Enable journalists

To enable journalists to use this and inform their reporting:

  • Provide tools to reach out (or a process) and to get consent for reuse of media.
  • The same for interviews.
  • And/or to ask questions of the audience.
  • ^ This helps the news industry produce better news.

And this is a lot better than just writing cheques for media companies to do what they already do.

 

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