Facebook Introduces Signal For Journalists, Offers Useful Trends to Publications
Given how Facebook has been fond of the 24-hours news cycle, it’s also clear through Facebook Stories as to how they’d like to be seen as a primary but dynamic source.
It’s also also obvious that through Instant Articles and Trending section that they are serious about presenting the latest news to users without them having to leave the site.
And now, Facebook has introduced a new platform called Signal that will help journalists to not only discover but embed their content.
A company blog post by Andy Mitchell, introduces the tool, in saying, “Today we’re excited to introduce Signal, for Facebook and Instagram, a free discovery and curation tool for journalists who want to source, gather, and embed newsworthy content from Facebook and Instagram, across news, culture, entertainment, sports, and more—all in one place.”
This is clearly also the latest move to target professional content creators. It was only last week that Facebook introduced its new Mentions app to all of its verified profiles. This app allows both journalists and celebrities to not only broadcast live video streams but also prepare posts that only their followers can see.
One reason why Signal is so useful is because it offers journalists a highly sorted list of newsfeeds of public content.
At this point, Trending topics are based on users personal interests and what they like but with Signal, journalists will get a broader spread of what is trending. Journalists will also know which topics are going viral through a new feature called Emerging Trends.
Even if it looks like Tweetdeck, this tool marks a major move towards Facebook becoming a major hub for news discovery. This tool can only help journalists publish their articles using Facebook as a result – a symbiotic relationship of sorts.