Joe Blogs: Can Facebook Become A Mainstream News Reader?

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Can Facebook Become A Mainstream News Reader?

Came across an interesting article about Facebook by Marshall Kirkpatrick who feels that Facebook Could Become World's Leading News Reader. Marshall Kirkpatrick is the lead writer at ReadWriteWeb which prompted my interest in technology, social media and the Internet. These early adopters; they know what they're talking about:

Facebook is a publishing, syndication and subscription platform where the interests of the reader, the publisher and the platform provider are all in sync. That's powerful. Subscription through Facebook may be sterile, hermetically sealed and controlled by one too-powerful communication company but it works. Facebook clearly has an opportunity to become the subscription mechanism of choice for hundreds of millions of readers and for millions of publishing organizations. That's a good place for any company to be.

I'm subscribed to 200 pages on Facebook and would be subscribed to more if it were easier to locate the Pages associated with the feeds within Google Reader. I'm not interested in the "quotes" Pages because I don't feel they add any significant value but I subscribe to many artists, agencies and news outlets. The value they provide has many benefits because I'm able to communicate directly with Pages, I receive updates where I'm most active, popular news and tour announcements. Brands should maintain and regularly update Pages because with 400 million users; Facebook is kind of a big deal on the Internet! What are your thoughts?!