Social journalism: Facebook’s new frontier

After creating a page dedicated to journalists and organizing the first gathering, Facebook is stepping on the accelerator of “social journalism.” Facebook knows that journalists like Twitter so much that even Zuckerberg himself tried to buy it for a sum of 2 billion dollars last autumn, a purchase that obviously did not find approval from the well-known microblogging platform. For me too, it was love at first sight, while with Facebook I still struggle to fully appreciate it.

And here are Facebook’s new intentions: to give the social network a more professional spin. The project comes from the appointment of Vadim Lavrusik who, from the New York office, will try to captivate journalists and convert them to using the platform as a useful tool for news gathering as well as for promotion. To date, despite the power of the platform, many journalists still do not have a personal profile. Facebook’s new manager is ready to bet that soon Facebook will finally be able to express itself in “social media journalism,” but doubts remain.

Compared to Facebook, Twitter has a cleaner interface, an appearance similar to that of news agencies that so many journalists are familiar with, and a one-way “friendship” system that allows you to see only the messages of those you follow on your own feed, and not those who have chosen to follow you. When you think about it, that’s no small thing. And then, the speed of posting always-similar news makes it easier for those who are combing through sources searching for a story or confirmation.

However, I am quite happy to follow this new Facebook project and to see if it will have any positive developments. We’ll see if in the near future we can talk about social journalism and, above all, whether journalism itself will retain the same allure that it has had throughout all these years of glorious history.