{"id":9203,"date":"2018-01-23T03:12:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T03:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/facebook-reforms-what-should-media-outlets-do\/"},"modified":"2018-01-23T03:12:21","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T03:12:21","slug":"facebook-reforms-what-should-media-outlets-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/critique\/2018\/01\/23\/9203\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Reforms: What Should Media Outlets Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Facebook crisis, which has been looming for several months now<\/a>, reached its logical beginning: the social networking site officially stated that it\u2019s implementing a revolutionary revision of its algorithm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, everything is still unclear, since the main part of the algorithm changes is just beginning. Moreover, even now we don\u2019t precisely know how Facebook\u2019s algorithm works, since the system takes into account thousands of qualitative and quantitative signals, based on which users\u2019 newsfeeds are built, and only one part of these is revealed. And so, similarly, we can talk about the new changes only approximately.<\/p>\n

We already know that Facebook has begun to decrease content shown from pages, all pages. Instead, the number of posts from friends will increase on the newsfeed. That is, over time we will almost never see posts from pages. Which, naturally, will become a nightmare for page admins.<\/p>\n

This change doesn\u2019t mean absolutely no content from pages will be visible to users. But it will be much harder to pass through the filters.<\/p>\n

Many of the methods of getting traffic to Armenian news websites will simply stop working. For example, it\u2019s unlikely that massively sharing links on different Facebook groups will benefit news websites. Also, asking for \u201clikes\u201d won\u2019t work. There are several reasons. First, Facebook decreases the impact of a \u201clike\u201d in the algorithm, giving more weight to comments and shares. Second, how widely a specific news story is discussed becomes more important. That is, the method whereby journalists mechanically share the news story in about 30 identical groups \u2014 \u201cThe day\u2019s hot topics,\u201d \u201cGreat news,\u201d \u201cExcellent news,\u201d \u201cImpeccable news,\u201d and so on \u2014 where about 100 journalists like them are engaged in painstaking \u201ccopy-pasting,\u201d won\u2019t yield results. Those mechanical-like posts won\u2019t show in users\u2019 newsfeeds. But if a post is actively being discussed in a Facebook group, then it will appear on the newsfeeds of the discussion participants\u2019 friends.<\/p>\n

That is, the important criteria for Facebook will be to what extent a story generates discussion. If your friends commented on a post on some group or page, then you will see it. If they haven\u2019t, then in all likelihood no one will notice that post.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s reports state that, for example, livestreams and the videos from them generate six times more discussion than simple videos. But even news outlets working only with videos won\u2019t have a large audience.<\/p>\n

As a result of Facebook\u2019s algorithm, several important factors have emerged:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. News outlets have to get off their high horses, and journalists have to interact with their audiences.<\/li>\n
  2. Journalists have to learn to work adequately, with groups that are moderated, where a community has formed.<\/li>\n
  3. News outlets have to try to cooperate with social media influencers, who are able to hold discussions on Facebook.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It is worth mentioning the issue of advertising. Do these changes mean that the social networking site is compelling all pages, organizations, and media outlets to move toward a paid advertising model? In reality, the price of advertising will go up, since it is developed on an auction basis. But advertising\u2019s place on the newsfeed is not infinite. That is, it won\u2019t be possible, all the same, to get ahead just with paid content.<\/p>\n

    Samvel Martirosyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Facebook crisis, which has been looming for several months now, reached its logical beginning: the social networking site officially stated that it\u2019s implementing a revolutionary revision of its algorithm. Of course, everything is still unclear, since the main part of the algorithm changes is just beginning. Moreover, even now we don\u2019t precisely know how Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique","author_posts-samvel-martirosyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}