Facebook’s Journalism Meetups: Another Release Uncovering Their Strategy

If you have been following the news in media, advertising and social networks, you would have by now become familiar with a trend in Facebook product and idea releases –  The changes to their Facebook page formatting that allows businesses to iFrame in their very own site content; updating user contact information with Facebook user ID’s, making your mobile Rolodex a Facebook calling card;  their purchase of Snaptu an Israeli mobile app. building company, which supports not only smart phones but feature phones as well; and the list goes on.  It was clear to us, in reading all of these Facebook releases that they were working on a deep and monetary rich road map that would make them so entrenched in our businesses and personal digital lives that the dependencies would enable them to monetize in ways they may have never thought possible.  So today, hearing that they’ve launched a program to befriend journalists was no surprise.

Facebook launched their  Journalists on Facebook page under the guise of being a learning and thought sharing tool that would enable journalists to easily integrate the different Facebook features, into their stories.  The blog post published by Jeffery Osofsky, Facebooks Director of Media Partnerships, speaks to this as another attempt to aid newspapers in making their news more social and he sites some convincing statistics “the average media organization has seen a greater than 300% increase in referral traffic from Facebook” and it’s enough to encourage anyone in journalism and media to ‘like’ the page and join the group.  In addition to the Facebook group, the social network mogul is also setting up a series of journalistic meetups around the world, with the first one being in Paolo Alto, California, at the Facebook head office.

With the talk of Twitter’s missing the mark in coming up with the right balance between business and social uses for their platform, there is no time like the present for Facebook to forge ahead on their product releases, which seem to be  positioning them to take over the world … literally.

If you are in media and interested  and end up liking the page, you will be in the company of folks like Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and me of course.  Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how and if Facebook’s reach out to journalists changes the media landscape.  Could it be that Facebook will create their own online news source that aggregates content shared by their opt in journalists and media partners?  Hmm…

AOL Drops Bebo to Focus on Patch (?)

Posted by Beverly Crandon on 4/06/10 • Categorized as Online Classifieds, Online Journalism, Social Media

There has been talk that AOL is planning on dropping Bebo, their social networking site, claiming that in the competitive world of social media, they’ve found it difficult to create a competitive and financially viable product out of Bebo.  I speculate on how much of that is really true and if their decision has anything to do with their recent and well embraced Patch.org initiative (a hyper-local online news, events, directory and classifieds site where content is contributed by the community) and their wanting to apply more energies there.  Already, Patch has progressed into an interesting business, but we’re still not convinced that it has a strong enough ’sustainability’ quality.

Whether the decision to drop Bebo is a strategic one or the right one, it seems difficult to understand the motivations, given the numbers posted about the social site.

Does the strategy change to be a geographic one, gender or age related…

If the focus for AOL truly lies in the future of Patch.org, there could be worries impending for newspaper publishers. For quite some time it’s been that suburban newspapers were maintaining some of their market share, as they were able to give advertisers a voice in a hyper-local forum found nowhere else, both online and in print.  If serious thought is put behind Patch.org and partnerships are formed to bolster key content areas of the site, things could get even more challenging for publishers.  One such natural partnership would be a play with Craigslist.  If you think about it, both properties apply a ‘for the people’ mentality and both have what the other doesn’t and both have dropped hints to wanting content sets that the other excels at.

Related information:

• Google once owned 5% of AOL and sold it at a loss to Time Warner in 2009
• Time Warner broke off the AOL extension of their business in 2009, after repeat and reported revenue losses
• AOL spent $850 million to buy Bebo in 2008

I haven’t yet had a chance to weigh in on the Patch.org initiative backed by AOL, but I will tonight, inspired by a glowing post by Fast Company.  Although my prose will not be as long as usual, it will be clear and concise.  This Patch.org thing… umm… not so much.  We are all about making news easier to access and read, with increased relevance, but I don’t see this AOL backed site doing it.  And yes folks, I know Jeff Jarvis is on the editorial board, and yes it’s true I am one of his biggest fans, but  I still don’t think that AOL is the brand to make it happen.

Already online today, there are a ton of news aggregators and organic sites that seem to serve the public well; The Huffington Post,  Digg, The Examiner, Topix,  Fwix, and let’s not forget Google News, coupled with the fact that I could continue listing sites that have garnered lasting mind and market share.  Moreover, these sites, despite their tenured success, are continuing to evolve/reinvent themselves for the betterment of the user and for further longevity.  Patch.org, on the other hand, has chosen to attract media attention with only five of the 50 states covered, with no international news.  A case of the premature clout quest I would say.

In order for Patch.org to make a lasting ripple on the market, they need an element that doesn’t make them a ‘me too’ product.

I am sorry AOL and Patch Media, but I just don’t see this as a viable competitor to the other online news tools Web users already have at their disposal.