Thursday 24 April 2014

Facebook launches FB Newswire service to woo journalists and news tweeters

Facebook launches FB Newswire service to woo journalists and news tweeters

Facebook wants to be everyone's catchall provider for everything from Instagram photos to activity tracking. Next up the company is launching a digital newspaper.


The social network announced it has launched FB Newswire, a regularly updated page with breaking news around the world made for journalists and news publications.


The new service is backed by the News Corp-owned Storyful, which will aggregate newsworthy content posted by Facebook users and organizations across the world. Through this process Facebook will effectively crowdsource reports from its users including photos and videos, as well as status updates from users on the ground of newsworthy events.


While Facebook is concentrated making sure every photo and updates taken from its users are verified by its editorial team, the social network did not mention anything about privacy concerns.


Instead the company is focused on making sure the FB Newswire Twitter account and page on Facebook itself is accurate and reliable for reporters.


Catching lightening in a bottle


Although Facebook might be targeting journalists specifically, Facebook already has an audience of over one billion mobile users swiping through the day's events on their newsfeeds. So we could see how this service could easily expand allowing the social network to directly report the news to its users.


Facebook is maneuvering itself to become a source for timely public information similar to Twitter but in a much more direct approach.


Whereas Twitter has become a news resource organically with users live tweets during events such as the Boston Bombing, Facebook wants to harness all the social activity of its users for its own reports with an extra element of validity.


While Facebook is making a strong push to journalists, it seems the real-time news war is offically on between Twitter and the social network.

















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