Will FB replace Twitter?

Will FB replace Twitter?
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Highlights

News is information that is new and latest’, we are all aware of this bit and so are the news agencies across the globe. And what better can a channel to disseminate news be than the new media, which reaches people in no time.

Instant Articles project rolled out by Facebook is a mobile-focussed tool that offers faster loading pages to media organsiations, who would post news directly on the social media

News is information that is new and latest’, we are all aware of this bit and so are the news agencies across the globe. And what better can a channel to disseminate news be than the new media, which reaches people in no time.

As of today, Twitter is considered to be the biggest platform to break news, hands down. But, like other things on the internet, Facebook has formulated plans to compete in this regard too.

The ‘Instant Articles’ project rolled out by Facebook is a mobile-focussed tool that offers faster loading pages to media organsiations, who would post news directly on the social media.

According to the deal, the media organisations can sell their own ads and keep all the earnings or allow Facebook to sell their ads and keep 70 per cent of the income.

At a point in time when the media organisations are finding new ways to be active across all platforms, the Instant Articles tool by Facebook is a great way of changing the way news is presented and disseminated.

Facebook’s intent is very clear- earn permission and control from both media houses and consumers and ripe the fruits when monopoly is achieved.

And the clients Facebook has already pitched in include New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, Vox and Mashable according to an article in Fortune.com.

The Instant Articles tool that takes content, makes it load faster and look good on mobile devices (dominator in digital industry),can prove to be a threat to twitter by replacing its monopoly for breaking news -- the thing it is known for, across the globe.

And, in the race, Facebook has already taken a lead by pitching in The Washington Post to publish all its content on Facebook, which aggregates to more than a thousand news articles and stories each day.

This bold decision of The Washington Post can either kill them completely or boost them to the top; the chances of latter are more because the audience these days doesn’t want to go websites, they prefer everything on one platform- in their news feed.

That’s precisely how digital and new media works - the producer goes to consumer and not the other way around.Publishing content directly on the social media would have an immediate effect on the advertisements of news organisations – the thing publishers mostly look forward to. No doubt the advertisements would increase.

All this sounds good and profitable for the publishers but the authority it would create for Facebook is far more than it is for publishers.

With increased advertising revenues for publishers and dependency on the Instant Articles tool to reach out to more people, would just increase Facebook’s monopoly in the market.

On the other hand Facebook can change its mind any time and alter the domain of publishers and shift to some other domain, like it altered its algorithm for no good reason. If this happens, Washington Post would incur a loss it cannot imagine recovering from.

To counter this tool of Facebook; Google and Twitter are laying roadmaps to design their own tools, which would apparently lead to much faster adoption for publishers and content creators.

The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that can counter Facebook’s Instant Articles tool is that the tools by Google and Twitter would be open source.

By:Tushar Kalawatia

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