Facebook's News Feed: "A personalized newspaper"

A personalized newspaper. That's what Greg Marra, an engineer at Facebook, calls the platform's News Feed function in a recent New York Times article. The Times story calls Marra, whose team writes the News Feed algorithms, "one of the most influential people in the news business." There's something you wouldn't have heard a decade ago. (Hmm, will he be a communications pioneer studied by some future Pro Sem class?)

About 30 percent of U.S. adults now get their news through Facebook. "The fortunes of a news site, in short, can rise or fall depending on how it performs on Facebook's News Feed," the story said, adding:

Though other services, like Twitter and Google News, can also exert a large influence, Facebook is at the forefront of a fundamental change in how people consume journalism. Most readers now come to it not through the print editions of newspapers and magazines or their home pages online, but through social media and search engines driven by an algorithm, a mathematical formula that predicts what users might want to read. It is a world of fragments, filtered by code and delivered on demand.

One of our primary discussion points this semester has been the development of a new business model(s) by news organizations. This increasing fragmentation of how people get their information means "norgs" must incorporate both editorial and business strategies for bringing readers/viewers — and advertisers — to their websites. "All the news that's fit to print" will take on a new meaning....