Facebook is hiring a small team of journalists to help curate breaking news and repair its strained relationship with news publishers, the social media giant announced Tuesday. 



The company says it will employ journalists to select breaking news and top stories that will appear in its soon-to-be-launched feature called News Tab, rather than using algorithms to determine what is shared with its vast network of users.



With the move, Facebook is part of a growing trend in the tech industry. Apple, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat have all employed journalists to help their companies sort through the news and cozy up to news organizations.



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Apple, for example, has used some form of human curation since its subscription Apple News app launched in 2015. In June 2017, the company hired former New York magazine executive editor Lauren Kern as the app’s editor-in-chief. Twitter has also employed some form of human news curation since 2015. 



Even with a team of in-house journalists, companies like Twitter continue to struggle in the fight against misinformation. On Monday, Twitter announcedit will no longer accept advertising from state-controlled media, in large part as a response to the discovery that China ran a misinformation campaign to combat Hong Kong protesters. 



Facebook, facing similar scrutiny for the same Chinese misinformation campaign, said that employing journalists will help “surface more high quality news.”



“Our goal with the News tab is to provide a personalized, highly relevant experience for people,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships said in a statement sent to Forbes. “The majority of stories people will see will appear in the tab via algorithmic selection. To start, for the Top News section of the tab we’re pulling together a small team of journalists to ensure we’re highlighting the right stories.”



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Facebook says the team will take into account user controls, pages and publisher as well as the news that users interact with or share,&nbsp;and other unnamed signals from its vast network to personalize content.&nbsp;



The company has been under pressure to mitigate its misinformation problem since it was revealed in 2016 that Russian operatives carried out a misinformation campaign in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” on the network, as it was described by special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.



The Mueller Report found that Russia spent $1.25 million per month on digital advertisements in an effort to sow discord in the U.S. and influence the presidential election. On Monday, Facebook came under fire for taking money from China to spread disinformation about Hong Kong protests.



The social media giant remains an important part of many Americans lives, much more than its rivals Twitter and Snapchat. According to Pew Research, about 69% of American adults use Facebook, and of those who use it, about 74% visit the site once a day. By comparison, only one in five U.S. adults (22%) use Twitter.



According to a survey conducted in 2018, about four in ten (43%) U.S. adults get at least some news from Facebook.



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In January 2017, Facebook hired Campbell Brown, a former television news anchor, to lead its news partnerships team. She remains a key figure in easing the tension between large national news outlets—those who have historically provided an endless trove of free content for the social media giant—and the company.



Publishing executives have slammed Facebook for siphoning advertising revenue away from traditional news publishers while also demanding that those same companies provide content for free. Following years of backlash, the social media company is now trying to work with publishers to create a more even relationship.



Facebook’s news partnership program involves deals that are potentially worth millions of dollars. The Wall Street Journal reports that several news outlets including the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, and the New York Times have discussed receiving as much as $3 million per year to license news content.



The News Tab, which has not been publicly viewed, is being positioned in stark contrast to the company’s Trending Topics news section, which shut down in 2016 following increasing pressure from users.



In 2016, the tech website Gizmodo published an article alleging contractors hired to curate the now-defunct Trending Topics feed were actively suppressing conservative news stories. In a letter to Congress, Facebook said, “We could not reconstruct reliable data logs from before December 2014, so were unable to examine each of the reviewer decisions from that period,” thus suggesting that it may have very well suppressed conservative news when the tool first launched.



-Michael Nuñez; Forbes

gettyimages-904274222-170667a

Facebook Joins Other Tech Giants In Employing Journalists To Curate News

Snap Inc is considering changes to its Snapchat app, known for disappearing photos and videos, that could make users’ public posts longer lasting or even permanent, people familiar with the matter said. 



The company is also weighing an option to reveal the identities of Snapchat users who make public posts, a person familiar with Snap’s plans said.



Together the changes would mark a big step in Snap’s effort to lure and keep users by making content shared publicly via the “Our Story” section, more available outside Snapchat. They could also create a new revenue source for money-losing Snap, which has seen its user base shrink and executives flee the company.



But such changes to Snapchat, which launched in 2011 and became an instant hit among teenagers and millennials, could trigger backlash from users who cherish their privacy, especially as rival Facebook Inc has been plagued by scandals over how it handles user data.



Snap is carefully weighing the privacy, technical and legal considerations of revealing user identities on public posts, said the person familiar with Snap’s plans.



Only Snapchat photo and video content shared to “Our Story”, which shares the snaps publicly to a wider audience and not just a user’s friends, would be affected and users would still have the option of deleting those stories, said the person.



Snap has already extended the shelf life of public stories, but making them last even longer or revealing more about the users who create them would be a further departure from Snapchat’s hallmark features.



Snap declined to comment.



The changes would come in response to feedback from Snap’s four partnerships with news discovery platforms that help media companies spot, analyze and republish public breaking news content on Snapchat, sources said. Reuters is a customer of SAM Desk and NewsWhip, two of the news discovery platforms.



The news partnerships are part of Snap’s “Stories Everywhere” initiative, launched last year to push content to more places outside Snapchat.



Snap announced the partnerships last year and will sign four more deals in the near future, said the person familiar with Snap’s plans.



Initially, public stories would disappear after 30 days but now remain viewable for 90 days, according to Snap’s support website.



Some partners have said that the disappearing and anonymous nature of public stories makes them difficult to work with, the sources said.



Some news organizations will not embed Snapchat stories into articles because the content eventually disappears, while others will not use them because they are unable to verify anonymous users’ Snapchat videos.



One source familiar with the news partnership said Snap is already talking with one partner about making public posts last even longer and to make some content from celebrities permanent.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">LUCRATIVE BUSINESS</h4>



Snap’s stock has been under pressure as investors question the company’s plan to reach profitability. Snap shares on Friday closed some 60 percent below their March 2017 initial public offering price.



Making user content more valuable for partners has helped boost revenue at Snap’s rivals.



Twitter Inc was one of the first social media platforms to sell access to public posts or tweets and reported $108 million in third-quarter revenue from non-advertising businesses like data licensing, its fastest-growing division.



Twitter sells access to more than 500 million daily tweets to customers including analytics firms, news organizations and financial institutions that use trending tickers and stories to place trades.



Snap does not currently charge for access to public data, but could earn more advertising revenue if snaps embedded outside of Snapchat last longer, said Debra Aho Williamson, a social media marketing analyst with research firm eMarketer.



“The advertising would be visible for longer, and I could see advertisers paying more for it,” Williamson said.



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Facebook, viewed as a rival to Twitter in the data licensing market, recently implemented strict restrictions that have in turn made Snap’s content more valuable, industry sources said.



Snapchat’s video-heavy posts also offer elements that Twitter and Facebook’s largely text content cannot, especially in breaking news events, one of the sources said. -Reuters



-Angela Moon and Sheila Dang

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Snapchat Weighs What Was Once Unthinkable – Permanent Snaps

You wake up each morning but before getting out of bed you’re already caught up with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. By the time you’ve reached the office, you know exactly what’s trending, which celeb made a faux pas, and what your virtual friends are wearing to work. Sound familiar?
According to the SA Social Media Landscape 2017 report issued by World Wide Worx and Ornico, there are 14 million South Africans on Facebook, 7.7 million on Twitter, 5.5 million on LinkedIn and 3.5 million on Instagram. It’s unclear how many are on Snapchat as users themselves don’t know what their follower count is; however, the last global estimate stood at 2% being South African.
Being on multiple social media platforms is the norm, but how has it changed our behavior? Gregory Eccles, a counselling psychologist practicing in Greenstone Hills, Johannesburg, says social media allows us to share far more of our lives with a large audience than we typically would have, creating opportunities for both greater inclusion of others in our lives, as well as for overshare or compromised privacy.
“Like any other communication tool, it gives us the power to affect change in our lives in good and bad ways, but it is our choice of how we use it that ultimately decides its impact,” says Eccles.
“It also allows us to indulge our inherent narcissism more fully than we otherwise may have been able, but those are desires that were there prior to social media.”
Saaleha Bamjee, a 33-year-old writer and photographer based in Johannesburg, who has since deleted her Snapchat account, says she used to catch up on the network in the mornings and evenings, and when not busy, in the afternoons.
“I joined out of a sense of FOMO [fear of missing out], and at first, followed the popular accounts,” she says. “It soon got tiresome, none of what people were sharing was of any value to me personally.”
There have been reports over the years of people going into debt to maintain an online presence and image, while a fair amount of ‘influencers’ overseas have quit Instagram altogether because they couldn’t keep up with the pressure of leading “fake” lives. Eccles says there is certainly pressure to maintain a certain type of social image, and the same applies to our social media presence.
“While some people may experience that pressure as quite overwhelming, it is ultimately still an action of choice for the most part as to how we present ourselves through social media.”
Bamjee says she made purchases on cosmetics and haircare appliances based on the recommendation of a local beauty blogger, while other purchases were tied to being a photographer.
“On Instagram, if I want to be hired or promote my services effectively, I have to upload quality images; this often involves shopping for food ingredients and props.”
Eccles thinks that social media doesn’t actively force us to make purchases. He says that the one aspect of social media when compared to other communication methods is that it allows us greater control over what we present, but we do not always take that into account when viewing posts from other people – an oversight which potentially mars our perspective of our status relative to others.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen an increase in new hardware such as better technology in smartphones like higher megapixels on the front-facing cameras, and 360-degree cameras, which Facebook has been supporting for quite some time now. These technologies enable us to share more than ever because it’s no longer just a photo; it’s now full-on livestreams through Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, and 360-degree photos and videos of every aspect of our lives.
While the availability of these sorts of tools can make it easier to indulge in our vices, Eccles maintains it is not the tools that are to blame.
“We need to look at our own motivations for why we use all of these tools the way we do, and think carefully about what other options we may have to achieve similar results (sense of social connection) and what the consequences of each method are.”
Eccles believes the problem is deeper than what it appears, and thinks that while consumer culture has an influence on our need to be connected all the time, the bigger influence are our own feelings of social connectedness or isolation.
“The truth is we all have a strong desire to connect socially with others, and social media is often the easiest way to do so. Unfortunately, our interactions through social media are quite superficial, forcing those who choose to fulfil their need for social interaction through social media to require more of it.”
Bamjee subsequently stopped following Snapchat accounts that had a “sameness” about it – a preoccupation with affluence and image.
“I soon realized that I didn’t want to see even more than what was already being shared on Facebook or Instagram. I missed having a conversation where I could ask ‘hey, what’s new’ and actually hear something I hadn’t known about previously.”
Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate our reasons for being on social media and the behavior it dictates. “We have a common urge to place blame outside ourselves – Facebook does this to us or smartphones do this to us, but while they often make it easier to behave in ways that may not be particularly healthy, such as ignoring the outside world in favour of spending all your time on your phone, we cannot ignore our own agency in all of this,” concludes Eccles.
While her time is still being monopolised by other social media platforms, Bamjee says she is happier in the sense that she no longer feels she has to know what’s going on with everyone all the time.

Tag: Snapchat

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Facebook Joins Other Tech Giants In Employing Journalists To Curate News

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