All media will be personalized in three to five years, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in September. One of the ways that’s likely to happen everywhere just appeared on the UK Independent.
The site announced last night that it now offers granular subscriptions by Facebook. Instead of just “Liking” the entire site and getting all its articles pushed to your Facebook newsfeed, you can now limit your Like to particular authors and some topics on the site. I just subscribed to trailblazing journalist Robert Fisk’s Independent articles on Facebook. This might seem like a small change – but it’s not. Media sites all over the web are sure to implement this kind of feature soon.
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With now over 600 million users, Facebook has succeeded in connecting people to the world in ways that RSS readers aimed to and failed. Google Reader, otherwise the most popular way to read highly personalized, syndicated content from all around the web in one place, has between tens of thousands of users and tens of millions – Google won’t say.
It’s clear though that Facebook has come up with a winning formula: emphasis on effective user experience, easy and meaningful social interaction, casual gaming and multi-media reading and writing, not just subscription like Google Reader offers. RSS readers, like Google Reader, arguably offer more powerful features, include subscription portability and allow you to keep your subscriptions private – but that hasn’t mattered for Facebook users.
The end result is a great place to read news from your favorite organizations. That’s what Facebook wants to be.
If media organizations think the iPad is likely to increase their readership in big ways, but at the risk of Apple controlling their subscriber information – the same could be said about Facebook.
Check out how the Independent has implemented Facebook subscriptions. That’s likely how everyone will do it in the near future.
The end result will be more and easier subscriptions and knowledge for users, more readership for publishers and more influence over the world we live in for Facebook.
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