Customising online news via social media
Jinfo Blog

By Penny Crossland

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With an increasing number of people reading their news online, news providers have been keen to make the reading experience more relevant and personal to users. After all, with so many sites reporting the same news, publishers want to ensure that online users return to their sites.

In recent months, we have seen several examples of news providers harnessing social media in various ways in order to supply their readers with more personalised news. Before it launched its paywall, the New York Times introduced a recommendation engine, an interesting feature which showed NYT readers which pages they had read by category. Based on their news consumption, the search engine made further recommendations on similar articles (reminiscent of Google’s ‘similar’ function).

As the accompanying press release stated, in addition to offering a personalised view of the NYT, “it gives our readers another reason to spend more time with our world-class journalism”. Registered and logged in users are offered 10 recommendations on their dashboard based on their reading history. A novel idea, and one that provides the publisher with valuable information about its readers.

Editorsweblog.org reported a couple of weeks ago, that the Huffington Post, no stranger to experimenting with social media, had launched a facility which allows their readers to follow topics of interest via their Facebook or Twitter accounts. By clicking a "plus" sign next to a topic or writer, users can opt to follow either. If they are interested in articles by a specific writer, they can also sign up to their RSS feeds or be alerted to new stories via email. Not only does this offer online readers a useful service, but the Huffington Post will also achieve more hits on its site as a result. No wonder that it is already amongst the top ten most read news websites.

Finally, the wishpot blog alerted us recently to Mashable’s new "custom-tailored experience" for its users. Via the Mashable follow feature, users set up accounts through Facebook or Twitter, and follow topics of interest, which can then be shared. According to the blog, Mashable wants to move from being a pure digital news source to a resource that "powers" news via its readers.

Using social media to make online news more relevant can only be a good thing and would seem to benefit the providers of free news versus the paywall advocates. No doubt we will be seeing more similar ventures in the near future.

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