How publishers are responding to Facebook’s game-changing news feed shift
By now, all publishers would know Facebook will be giving them far less priority in the news feed, which could drastically reduce their online audience. Zoe Samios speaks to some of the country’s leading publishing brands to find out how they’re adapting and if they’re moving away from the platform.
For years, publishers have benefited from Facebook’s biggest asset: reach. They’ve desperately plugged articles into the site’s news feed in the hope of attracting audiences, with little return on revenue or proof their efforts were even effective.
Hindsight suggests this was one of the publishing industry’s biggest vulnerabilities, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reaffirming publishers’ fears last week, telling them they were not a priority for the tech giant anymore.
Quote from Newcorp: “While we welcome changes that reward quality and confront clickbait”
LOLLLLLLLLLL
Always plenty of pissing and moaning from news publishers about Facebook but rarely hear of solutions to combat their falling revenues.
Facebook doesn’t owe them anything.
What if….?
What if a media publisher consortium was formed to create a Facebook-style consumer experience – an aggregator of news and media articles that consumers can comment of and interact with and share (without the need to go through paywalls and multiple sign-ups).
All too often companies are bickering about their own patch of turf – that they are missing what the consumer actually wants/needs.
One day – in the future – Facebook wont exist. Where will this leave news publishers then to get their necessary reach – I’d be thinking about it right now.
Mia Freedman nailed it when she said, “Facebook has dramatically been restricting access to our followers.”
The greatest trick Facebook ever pulled was getting content providers to rely on them without ever directly offering them a dime, and then charging them a dollar back for the privilege of reaching their followers. At least Mia sees the forest for the trees, unlike some publishers quoted…
Facebook has clearly dictated that the organic love affair is over and still some publishers, like ex-lovers addicted to the lashes tongue, continue with their self-flagellation, frantically tying themselves in ever tighter knots in the hope of convincing themselves how closely their goals align with their master’s.
Advertising will not be the future core cashchow of FB. The migration of their business model from advertising to becoming a diversified communications giant is evident. In order to achieve this is retention and conversion of users across all of their platforms and unfortunately saturation of ads on facebook has seen many users migrate to utilization of instagram for both content and direct communication.
I for one hate my newsfeed as I am inundated with irrelevant crap and hardly see content from my friends.
Wow, the Yahoo7 CEO has no idea. Business as usual? Really? At least Mia and Junkee seem to be engaged with the real world and understand the impact on audience.