Social networks become newspapers&magazines?
Paper, Pulse, content curators: in the sea of informations users receive on a daily basis, social networks choose to select and organize it. In short, to become our customized newspapers and magazines.
We live into an ecosystem of informations that need to be conveyed, handled, directed.
We want the quick scan, fast sharing. Informations packaged and shipped at home, perhaps with a drone. And we connect more and more often from a mobile device, where the times of use are further shortened. The use is often defined as “snack”: a bite of what we need and we are interested in and then ready towards a new search. Websites need to gain in five seconds the selective attention of the selected user.
But if you’re a social network something can help you. Something as easy as a newspaper.
Facebook introduced Paper, available only in the USA at the moment. Once downloaded, the app allows you to sort categories according to your own interest. This creates a series of tabs that represent a sort of vertical paper on a specific topic (cooking, technology, science, among others). The Zuckerberg company’s allows, through this app, to benefit from content selected by curators: a group of editors selects the hottest news of the moment and inserts them into 19 available sections. Even the design is careful to make us feel like we’re reading a newspaper: switching from one area to another, as if you were reading articles from different newspapers or several different sections of the same publication. Interesting detail: Paper (not the user) filters what happens online. Users want to accomplish simple and contained actions. Little effort, maximum results. It doesn’t matter if we know that the result is affected by a particular algorithm or platform and therefore may only represent one partial side of the situation.
LinkedIn on the other hand has proposed the Pulse aggregator, stating that this is an app that allows you to take advantage of professional news tailored to you. Personalization and content go hand in hand again. The app syncs with your LinkedIn mobile profile and channels into a single space news from sources and influencers you already follow. In addition, according to your preferences and your professional interests, Pulse offers customized and personalized content recommendations. You can also create lists around specific topics and discover across news about events or what is trending.
Does this new trend represent the end of journalism as we have known it so far? Perhaps the figure of the journalist is going to be replaced by the one of the content curator, who will be in charge of the collection and the organization of the news rather than the production of them.
This blog is written by the members of the FBDA / GROUP team. Learn more on www.fbdagroup.org
