Social-Media
Facebook's pilot program linking users' news subscriptions could minimize password fatigue
It's a slightly irritating issue: when you read the snippet of a Facebook news post and click through to read the whole story, even though you're registered to the news update, you hit the paywall and have to log in manually. Facebook says it's now testing a tool that will help minimize the amount of times you need to log in to news outlets, enabling news users to connect their Facebook profiles to their subscriptions.
The goal, according to Facebook, is to provide better news consumption experience on Facebook and to encourage publishers to deepen their relationship with subscribers.
Here's how it works: Facebook discovers a subscriber from one of its publisher partners and invites subscribers to connect their subscription account to their Facebook account. Each time the reader taps the publisher's article link on Facebook, the user won't have to log in and won't reach the publisher's paywall.
Facebook has been developing a feature with a select community of publishers, which demonstrates potential for collaboration and delivery of material. During the month of June, subscribers in the test community who connected their Facebook subscription accounts clicked 111 percent more posts, the company said.
And if subscribers connect their accounts, Facebook claims they 're going to show that subscribers have more material from that particular publisher.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Athletic, and Winnipeg Free Press have been testing the functionality, and given statements for Facebook's blog post that described a "frictionless" user interface, but it seems a little early to call it a success. Christian Panson, Vice President of Digital Winnipeg Free Press, said in a blog post that one of the most frequent concerns to readers is that they have to log in too often.
People have a tired account and password, he said, adding that we expect this to help us create faster and more consistent interaction with our customers.
Facebook released its News tab to US users in June, with plans to advertise for participating publishers. In order to apply as a partner, Facebook required publishers to conform with its honesty requirements and to have adequate audiences. It said that it will rely on third-party fact-checkers to review posts for clickbait and copyright infringements, as well as sensationalistic content. Last week, it said it was aiming to extend the News tab to other nations, but it was a little unclear about the timetable, saying it would be six months to a year from now.
It wouldn't be shocking if news publishers were skeptical of getting into yet another Facebook contract, since the news track record and how it handles publishers isn't the best. Several innovative news projects have been implemented in recent years, including its Instant Posts, and its News Stream technology is commonly criticized for siphoning ad revenue away from local news in particular. In the early to mid-2010s, when publishers pumped money into video production to grab some of Facebook's video traffic, the company's figures were released. Subsequently, Facebook de-prioritized the kinds of material shared on the accounts in favour of supporting the posts of friends and families.
Facebook states in its new blog post that it will add more publisher partners and that it is actively working on an approach that will enable users to directly start an account linking mechanism on publisher websites.
