Mark Zuckerberg dreams of a day when Facebook’s computers would know you and your habits so well that it would deliver exactly the information you want to see — what he calls “the best personalized newspaper in the world.”
As the company Mr. Zuckerberg co-founded turns 10 years old on Tuesday, it hasn’t quite achieved that mind meld with its 1.2 billion users. But it’s not for lack of trying.
On Monday, Facebook stepped more directly onto the news media’s turf, rolling out a new iPhone app called Paper that enlists a handful of human editors to supplement its computers in recommending articles and blog posts on a dozen topics, including top news, food, parenting, the environment and gay rights.
Related Coverage
FiftyThree makes a creative app called Paper, at left. On Monday Facebook is releasing an app, also called Paper, at right.
Bits Blog: Makers of Paper Ask Facebook to Change Its New App NameFEB. 3, 2014
The app, which made its debut to rave reviews from tech news sites, offers users an easy way to browse their news feeds. But it also presents them with a series of minimagazines, each with a distinct tone and articles chosen by unidentified curators the company says have extensive expertise in their fields. Those editors are “painting the order and organizing the stories in a way that is rich and engaging,” said Michael Reckhow, Paper’s product manager.
Paper, which the company calls an experiment, comes on the heels of the company’s recent efforts to bring to its users more substantive articles and fewer cat videos. In December, the company made a major change to its news feed — its users’ stream of friends’ status updates, photos, videos and ads. The adjustment to its software gave more prominence to what Facebook considers “high quality” news sites and downgraded the viral videos and chain-letter appeals that it views as cluttering up the feed and making the service less appealing to users.
Together, Paper and the new news feed formula are the latest initiatives by the company to find new ways to keep its users deeply engaged. Some, like the company’s 2012 purchase of the photo-sharing service Instagram, have been wildly successful. Others, like last year’s attempt to create a smartphone focused entirely on Facebook apps, have been failures.
Facebook, which directs more traffic to web publishers than any other social network, denies that it has any plans to create original content to compete with news sites.
That sets it apart from the Internet giant Yahoo, which has partnerships with major news organizations to showcase their articles, but is also producing its own digital magazines on topics like technology and food.
“Facebook is not the container for articles and content. It’s really just a pointer,” said Chris Cox, vice president for product at Facebook. “We’re not trying to get into the business of writing articles and creating content.”
But the company does want to guide users to content that will keep them coming back — and expose them to more of the advertising that has propelled the company’s revenue and stock price to record levels.
The company’s vast influence over the news that people see makes some in the industry nervous. A Pew Research study in late 2013 said that one-third of adults in the United States now get their news from Facebook. And the social network accounted for one out of every six minutes Americans spent online in December, according to the research firm comScore.Read more..
As the company Mr. Zuckerberg co-founded turns 10 years old on Tuesday, it hasn’t quite achieved that mind meld with its 1.2 billion users. But it’s not for lack of trying.
On Monday, Facebook stepped more directly onto the news media’s turf, rolling out a new iPhone app called Paper that enlists a handful of human editors to supplement its computers in recommending articles and blog posts on a dozen topics, including top news, food, parenting, the environment and gay rights.
Related Coverage
FiftyThree makes a creative app called Paper, at left. On Monday Facebook is releasing an app, also called Paper, at right.
Bits Blog: Makers of Paper Ask Facebook to Change Its New App NameFEB. 3, 2014
The app, which made its debut to rave reviews from tech news sites, offers users an easy way to browse their news feeds. But it also presents them with a series of minimagazines, each with a distinct tone and articles chosen by unidentified curators the company says have extensive expertise in their fields. Those editors are “painting the order and organizing the stories in a way that is rich and engaging,” said Michael Reckhow, Paper’s product manager.
Paper, which the company calls an experiment, comes on the heels of the company’s recent efforts to bring to its users more substantive articles and fewer cat videos. In December, the company made a major change to its news feed — its users’ stream of friends’ status updates, photos, videos and ads. The adjustment to its software gave more prominence to what Facebook considers “high quality” news sites and downgraded the viral videos and chain-letter appeals that it views as cluttering up the feed and making the service less appealing to users.
Together, Paper and the new news feed formula are the latest initiatives by the company to find new ways to keep its users deeply engaged. Some, like the company’s 2012 purchase of the photo-sharing service Instagram, have been wildly successful. Others, like last year’s attempt to create a smartphone focused entirely on Facebook apps, have been failures.
Facebook, which directs more traffic to web publishers than any other social network, denies that it has any plans to create original content to compete with news sites.
That sets it apart from the Internet giant Yahoo, which has partnerships with major news organizations to showcase their articles, but is also producing its own digital magazines on topics like technology and food.
“Facebook is not the container for articles and content. It’s really just a pointer,” said Chris Cox, vice president for product at Facebook. “We’re not trying to get into the business of writing articles and creating content.”
But the company does want to guide users to content that will keep them coming back — and expose them to more of the advertising that has propelled the company’s revenue and stock price to record levels.
The company’s vast influence over the news that people see makes some in the industry nervous. A Pew Research study in late 2013 said that one-third of adults in the United States now get their news from Facebook. And the social network accounted for one out of every six minutes Americans spent online in December, according to the research firm comScore.Read more..
Source: Technology News in Hindi
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