The Shop Talk panelists begin the new year by talking about new media.
In particular, they discuss plans by Facebook to promote news articles posted by users. The story was reported recently in Ad Age, which said Facebook is trying to make itself “…more Twitter-like in the process.”
The panelists agree that Facebook is trying to capture some of the buzz generated by Twitter and also hopes that it will generate more advertisements by placing more news articles in its feed.
Ad Age also reported Facebook is trying to bill itself as a personalized newspaper. The Shop Talk panelists believe there are pros and cons to that, and in particular are concerned people won’t get enough news on stories they need to know about.
In addition, news operations with big budgets will be able to pay Facebook to promote their stories while smaller newsrooms might end with stories that get lost in the feed.
