The upcoming death of Google Reader and the addition of hashtags signal Facebook will likely launch a news reader at the June 20th press event it’s just sent out mysterious invites to. A news reader app and web product could take advantage of Facebook’s massive treasure trove of aggregate data on what people share to surface popular and personally recommended news articles.
The event invite, first spotted by Joanna Stern of ABC News, says “A small team has been working on a big idea. Join us for coffee and learn about a new product.” The conspicuously analog invite was sent out via snail mail instead of by email like Facebook usually does. There’s also a coffee stain on the invite. You know where else you find coffee stains? On the newspaper, while you’re reading it, over coffee.
Nobody knows what Facebook knows. Since most users share semi-privately, it can’t be scraped for trending topics. But Facebook’s algorithms see all. Similar to how it offers ad targeting data in anonymous aggregate, Facebook could surface what articles are being shared most frequently across its user base in addition to letting people follow specific sources. It also could take advantage of hashtags to help people flag articles about a certain topic to Facebook’s algorithms.
When I asked Facebook about what more it could do with its data on what people share, it initially offered to put me on the phone with someone, but then decided not to, and referred to the hashtag announcement from earlier this week. That blog post notes ”Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations. We’ll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months.”
A reader could be that next step. In fact, I’m pretty much positive it is, though I couldn’t get anyone at Facebook to confirm on the record.
Whether it will be a formal RSS reader remains to be seen. Facebook’s new product could include Facebook Page posts, but might certainly integrate RSS, allowing people to import feeds from blogs and other sites.
As our Ingrid Lunden wrote yesterday, “Lines of code referring to “rssfeeds” have recently started to appear in Facebook’s Graph API code (as spotted by developer and Facebook sleuth Tom Waddington). Linking the RSS feed to a user’s Facebook ID, the code schema also covers such aspects as title, URL and update time. Each RSS feed subsequently has entries and subscribers.” This code could be part of the new product, but it also may be unrelated, having to do with a user’s own posts being an RSS feed, rather than a user reading feeds produced by others.
A Facebook news reader would come at a perfect time, just two weeks before Google shuts down Google Reader for good. The June 20th launch might give Facebook just enough time to help people migrate onto its version. Hopefully it won’t just be a clone, but something that augments classic RSS reading with the unique social signals Facebook has access to.
A reader would certainly qualify as a “big idea”, as Facebook is all about connecting you to people, things, and information you care about, and news is by definition what people care about. A successful launch could drastically increase time spent on Facebook, fill it with useful data about what topics people are interested in, offer new advertising opportunities around current events, and most importantly, make us all better informed citizens of Earth.
The event invite, first spotted by Joanna Stern of ABC News, says “A small team has been working on a big idea. Join us for coffee and learn about a new product.” The conspicuously analog invite was sent out via snail mail instead of by email like Facebook usually does. There’s also a coffee stain on the invite. You know where else you find coffee stains? On the newspaper, while you’re reading it, over coffee.
Nobody knows what Facebook knows. Since most users share semi-privately, it can’t be scraped for trending topics. But Facebook’s algorithms see all. Similar to how it offers ad targeting data in anonymous aggregate, Facebook could surface what articles are being shared most frequently across its user base in addition to letting people follow specific sources. It also could take advantage of hashtags to help people flag articles about a certain topic to Facebook’s algorithms.
When I asked Facebook about what more it could do with its data on what people share, it initially offered to put me on the phone with someone, but then decided not to, and referred to the hashtag announcement from earlier this week. That blog post notes ”Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations. We’ll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months.”
A reader could be that next step. In fact, I’m pretty much positive it is, though I couldn’t get anyone at Facebook to confirm on the record.
As our Ingrid Lunden wrote yesterday, “Lines of code referring to “rssfeeds” have recently started to appear in Facebook’s Graph API code (as spotted by developer and Facebook sleuth Tom Waddington). Linking the RSS feed to a user’s Facebook ID, the code schema also covers such aspects as title, URL and update time. Each RSS feed subsequently has entries and subscribers.” This code could be part of the new product, but it also may be unrelated, having to do with a user’s own posts being an RSS feed, rather than a user reading feeds produced by others.
A Facebook news reader would come at a perfect time, just two weeks before Google shuts down Google Reader for good. The June 20th launch might give Facebook just enough time to help people migrate onto its version. Hopefully it won’t just be a clone, but something that augments classic RSS reading with the unique social signals Facebook has access to.
A reader would certainly qualify as a “big idea”, as Facebook is all about connecting you to people, things, and information you care about, and news is by definition what people care about. A successful launch could drastically increase time spent on Facebook, fill it with useful data about what topics people are interested in, offer new advertising opportunities around current events, and most importantly, make us all better informed citizens of Earth.