Would you trust your friends to tell you which headlines are the most important?
If publishers who want more traffic start collaborating with Facebook, they may get more clicks, but they will also surrender even more power to the juggernaut social network, which boasts more than 1.3 billion users.
The home page could go the way of printed copies since visitors are increasingly attracted to articles through mobile versions, the New York Times reported. Facebook has been taking a "listening tour" to discuss collaboration possibilities with publishers, who want the site's eyeball draw but are leery of becoming subject to the world's biggest social network.
"Because we play an increasingly important role in how people discover the news that they read every day, we feel a responsibility to work with publishers to come up with as good an experience as we can for consumers," Chris Cox, chief product officer for Facebook, told the Times.
One potential partnership would see publishers sending pages to Facebook that would be housed inside the site's app and load along with Facebook ads; the two companies would divvy up the revenue.
"Increasingly, people would rather have their news curated by friends rather than editors," David Bradley, owner and chair of Atlantic Media Company, told the Times. "Facebook technology may create a better reader experience than publishers can match--pages that load better and better page design."
Publishers know that Facebook has successfully managed to transition its ad-based business model into mobile screens, something they'll have to mirror as more and more readers view stories from their phones.
Some are worried that Facebook will turn "listening" into "telling" since its traffic gives it plenty of clout to name terms for publishers.
"We've talked about the importance of a united front so that Facebook gets the message that this isn't going to work, but that could change if somebody cuts a big revenue-sharing deal," a publishing executive, who wanted to stay anonymous, told the Times.
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