Murdoch and Cuban, get over it – we’re all getting our news through filters these days. And now Facebook is joining Twitter, Viewsflow, Google, blogs or just friends’ emails as a source of trusted recommendations of what to read. Few people loyally subscribe to a single news source in the way our parents started and finished with the Times, Telegraph or whatever.
Facebook is already the leading source of human-filtered news, but such sources are still tiny (5%) compared to the general search engines and portals (95%). Facebook’s extraordinary reach (400m users) and comprehensiveness (young users live in it) could change that.
Try it in Facebook
- search for a news outlet such as NY Times or Guardian, or bloggers such as Guido Fawkes
- click ‘Become a fan’ for them
- go to your Home page
- under the left-hand news feed links, click ‘More’ then ‘Create new list’
- call it ‘News’ and add the news sources you’re a fan of
- to add more sources later, click the edit pencil by your News feed’s link and repeat
It’s not that fluid a process yet – but Facebook only suggested this use last week.
Doesn’t work for me :( There is no option ‘Create new list’