RSSFour US news broadcasters expand on fast-growing Facebook
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published August 18, 2008, 7:03 PM
With Facebook growing at a far brisker clip than any other major social network, four big news organizations, including Fox News -- whose parent company owns rival MySpace -- are now expanding their Facebook presences.
News opportunities on Facebook could loom huge. Although about 32 percent of all Internet users belong to social networking sites, only roughly 10 percent of them regularly receive news on those sites, according to a new survey by Pew Research.
Meanwhile, Facebook has held the number one spot among social networking sites ever since overtaking MySpace in April of this year, says a new report from comScore released last week.
Over the past year, Facebook has enjoyed a 153% increase in new users, in contrast to an industry average of only 25% and an anemic rate of just three percent for MySpace.
Now, although ABC News has pulled a "U.S. Politics" application launched on Facebook last year, Disney-owned ABC is also expected to roll out a new and larger news application on Facebook over the next few weeks.
CNN and MSNBC.com -- the online portal for NBC News -- have both confirmed they are working on improving their own respective presences on Facebook.
On Tuesday, Fox -- an organization owned, like MySpace, by News Corp. -- is expected to unveil a new video player for the Facebook site that will let users watch Fox and Fox News videos, post selected clips to their own profiles, and share those clips with friends on Facebook.
Fox will also roll out a redesigned page on Facebook designed for full exploitation of Facebook features such as user reviews, polls, and discussion boards.
Why is Facebook growing so rapidly? Some observers point to increasing globalization on the site since Facebook's adoption of natural language interfaces a couple of years ago.
Moreoever, outside of Facebook's proven attractiveness to new users, Joel Cheatwood, Fox's senior VP for development, has cited some demographic differences between Facebook and MySpace, contending that Facebook pulls in a slightly older social networking crowd.
broadcasters take whatever action is needed to gain my advertising money.
more money for facebook but likely to become a poorer service and people will begin to go elsewhere.
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Great to see the "Murdoch kiss of death" in operation. He buys MySpace, it dies. He buys into ITV (UK) and it shares bomb. Even his UK Sky TV has haemorrhaged viewers...
http://www.ukfree.tv/barb/Total_Sky.png
So, Facebook... probably time to block Murdoch's Fox channels before he kills off your platform too!
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And you're complaining about Murdoch? Seems he's a rare breath of fresh air in the midst of cultural degeneration called social networking if he is actually capable of doing that!
Besides, who wants to see what 13 year olds and Obama supporters 'think'? ...sorry for both the redundancy and the outrageous assertion!
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contending that Facebook pulls in a slightly older social networking crowd
That's certainly an understatement. MySpace is for children. They're the only ones who don't feel nauseous when seeing the ugly layouts people have thrown together in as obnoxious a manner as is possible.
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If MySpace is for children, Facebook is for adolescents. As for the ugly layouts, they are the default design for MySpace, there is hardly any real way people could make them better even if they tried. Facebook isn't much better. Somebody here once described it so, Social Networking sites are ghettos. Messy, ugly and sometimes dangerous.
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Hey, be nice!
The nauseaus Wired mag model of layout is rad, way cool, tubular, or whatever hip term you want to call it.
My take? Who cares. I ignore them all.
Next.
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