Comments on: Facebook Gains On Google as Trusted News Source

By: John S.

John S. — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:37:34 +0000

@Mike

I think the point the report is saying is that more people POST news on their facebook wall for others to see and more people visit news sites from the walls of their friends, as opposed to the Google News site itself.

By: Mike DePouw

Mike DePouw — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:44:21 +0000

I don’t understand this article at all.

Google News is an aggregator and Facebook isn’t. New sources can have fan pages, I guess that is were the news sources are getting visitors from?

I don’t know how you can say that makes Facebook more trusted than Google news? I think the logic is something like this: because I was on Facebook and I returned to CNN.com multiple times that makes Facebook more trusted?

I think this article muddies the waters. It mixes issues, who is more trusted compared to who gets their news from the same source. Maybe I just don’t understand it though.

By: John S.

John S. — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:14:39 +0000

Thanks for the comment and the insight. I think social media plays a huge roll and it will do the same for media that the newspaper when that was first printed on.

By: Steven Duque

Steven Duque — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:10:31 +0000

Though this may seem surprising at first glance, a closer look at a couple different aspects of either site, I think, reveals why this outcome is natural, if not obvious.

1. Fan Pages & News Feeds: Facebook fan pages are the perfect way for media outlets to consistently reach a targeted, interested audience with their content. Not only is membership opt-in, but new content posted to a given page is streamed into fans’ News Feeds. The only similar offering that Google provides is Buzz, which is a comparatively cluttered, less user-friendly experience in its current form.
2. The Variety of Google News: What makes Google News so appealing to me (and other news junkies, I assume) is that it provides myriad, varied sources that cover the same topic. In other words, there are always a lot of choices on Google News. It’s no wonder, then, that readers are choosing major media outlets less frequently through Google News. In fact, I think it’s testament to the strength of major media outlets’ brands that they attract so many loyal followers through Google News, despite the available choices.

For more of my thoughts on this issue, check out my blog post at: http://stevenduque.com/2010/03/2-reasons-why-people-trust-facebooks-news-more-than-googles/