Thursday, 04, Feb 2010 10:59
Social networking site Facebook could soon become a force to be reckoned with in terms of being an online news reader, experts have suggested.
Earlier this week, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb claimed that Facebook's recent efforts to encourage members to set up news feeds through their accounts could make the site a contender against the likes of Google Reader.
He said that Facebook's naturally social properties and the fact that it might be seen as easier to follow a news feed on the site than through a standard RSS reader could be good for the network.
Commenting on this, Heather Hopkins of Experian Hitwise noted that Facebook was the fourth biggest source of traffic to news and media sites in the US during the week ending January 30th, after the likes of Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
Furthermore, the social network accounted for 3.52 per cent of upstream visits to online news portals, compared with 1.39 per cent for Google News.
"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the news and media category," she commented.
"And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch."
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