A study has come out showing that more than fifty percent of all web users see Facebook as a way of receiving news and getting news information.
The study also showed that the most used site to get this news is Facebook, apparently. The research was conducted by the Reuters Institute for The Study Of Journalism which discovered that 44 percent of Facebook users use the social media network as a major news source.
Facebook growth
The news is unsurprising as it shows Facebook’s growing user base and influence, which was also highlighted by the company’s first quarter profits which were posted at $5.38 billion. The result exceeded anything the experts expected. The company now has over three million firms advertising their wares through them. Most of these firms are small and medium-sized businesses which in the olden days, used to buy newspaper space.
Mark Zuckerberg has been transparent about his plans when it comes to the Internet. He wants to monopolize the digital ad news distribution system. He intends to have Facebook Instant Articles section become the average person’s, “primary news experience.” In some cases, it already is, as highlighted by the survey done by the RISJ.
For millions of Facebook users across the globe, the tech giant is their Daily Me, their light access, and information channel. It has come and given users a chance to provide private and personal messages to friends and in the process rendered newspapers useless.
Add in the bit about it offering local news, national news and international tidbits here and there; then the newspapers are blown out of the water.
Even back in the days of newspapers, people still spend more time on Facebook than they did then on newspapers. Last year, a Pew Research showed that at least 30 percent of adults regarded the social media network as their primary source of news. Facebook commands 80 percent of the social media industry.
Facebook is slowly but surely bankrupting the newspaper business because of its own business model. They are slowly taking all the traditional newspaper readers and it is no doubt that they already have the new generation locked into their business. But all of this may be hazardous in the end for Facebook. It might be that they are killing a business that they so dependent on, since in most of the cases they get the content from these newspapers. It’s a scenario which needs rethinking if newspapers are going to survive.
