Will Facebook become the world's ultimate news source?

One of the big non-stories in the media space in recent times has been Twitter’s interest in buying Mic, a news website that, in its own words, is aimed at the millennials. (The website maintains a conversational tone as it presents the latest political and cultural news. There is plenty embedding of pictures and Twitter posts.) But after Twitter made an offer to buy Mic in late 2014 and Mic declined the offer, that story never took off.

Twitter’s stillborn purchase of Mic indicates an increasing trend among the Silicon Valley crowd to snap up media properties. With Washington Post now in the hands of Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and New Republic owned by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, the media setup, at least in the US, has been seeing the convergence of the technology and media spaces for some time now.

That the media scenario in the West is undergoing a churn is by now old news. Print outlets across the US have closed down or drastically shed numbers. Online is where the money is, we are told, but even legacy publications such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have tried a number of formats, none entirely successful, to make it work. The ad revenue earned online has not kept pace with print rates, because of which media properties have often flirted with paywalls. Those, in turn, have not been very successful, except for the odd Financial Times or the Economist which are both English properties.

It is in this background that Facebook’s recently unveiled measure, of getting media companies to publish stories on its platform first, needs to be seen. The company has approached legacy houses like NYT as well as new-age players such as Buzzfeed with the plan. This is how it breaks down: the media house will keep all (or a majority of) ad revenue that will accrue from viewers reading the stories on Facebook’s platform. At a time when a hefty bunch of news stories are anyway reached through Facebook, the scheme would allow media houses to benefit monetarily from this arrangement. It would benefit Facebook because the social media giant will come closer to its vision to becoming something like Google News, only stronger. While Google News is a mere aggregator, Facebook’s new plan, called “Instant Articles”, will have media houses actively participate with Facebook to build a version of the “personalised newspaper” on Facebook’s platform.

With a user base exceeding a billion, Facebook has obviously got media houses interested with its offer. On average, it takes no less than eight seconds for a web page to open once a user has clicked on a link on Facebook. This can be especially tiresome on mobile where new windows can keep popping up, slowing down system performance. Twitter already has a system where its mobile app lets you read external content inside the Twitter ecosystem, but that is merely pasted text. What Facebook intends to do is go one step ahead. It will not only host entire stories for ease of reading, it will pay the respective media house for this hosting, thus creating a win-win situation.

Of course, there are voices of dissent. As Facebook claws itself deeper into the media landscape, there is a real possibility that it might use its financial might to drive editorial policy. Already, the Facebook News Feed algorithm chooses content displayed on any given user’s page depending on the user’s interest and previous Facebook browsing history. While this personalised newspaper may be no bad thing, there is no need, some would say, to cede greater control to Facebook. Who is to say that Facebook would not alter its algorithm to give greater prominence to stories run by media houses which with it has a financial arrangement?

All of this is mere speculation at this juncture, but whether one internet property should be allowed to consolidate greater power around the media landscape is a question worth asking. While Facebook’s power makes it unique, when it comes to tech moguls who have bought media properties in the past, we have had mixed reviews. 

While Bezos’ acquisition of the Washington Post has been universally heralded (he has been working on making the Post a paper for the “digital age”), Hughes’ overtaking of New Republic was met with much disdain. The media business, at heart, is an intellectual enterprise, and there is no doubt that its seniors would balk at the prospect of bowing before 20-something tech upstarts.

That said, there is little they can do about it. The media business in the West will continue to struggle unless a viable online model can be worked out. While we here in India do not need to worry about the demise of print since we are still a media-wise growing society, the media business here too will eventually have to face the same questions. What the tech pack, led by Facebook, is doing can give pointers to how the media landscape of the future would look like.