How to make Facebook your News Reader in 4 Easy Steps
Update: Facebook’s new homepage design is gradually being rolled out to users (roughly 80 million users a day). This short Tutorial will show screenshots for both versions of Facebook’s home page.
In this short guide you will learn to use Facebook to read news from your favorite online newspapers and magazines, separating news from friends’ updates.
If you are familiar with RSS readers like Google Reader, then you know what I’m talking about. If you are not and you like being on Facebook, setting Facebook as a news reader is really straightforward. First, you need to become a Fan of the newspapers and magazines you would like to receive news from:
- Search for your favorite newspaper and Become a Fan
- (Old Facebook design) Go to your Friends page and click on All Connections
- Scroll down the entries and when you find a newspaper, select Add to list and Create a New List
- (Old Facebook design) Go to the Homepage, on the left menu click on More and then click on the name of the List you want to access
After you’ve connected to a few news outlets’ Facebook pages, go to your Friends page and see all your connections to create a new list for them:
If you are already using the new Facebook’s design, you can find All Connections by clicking on See All on your Friends box in your Profile.
When you’re finished adding magazines and newspapers to the new list you created (you can create as many lists as you want), it’s easy to access your Facebook news reader:
On the new Facebook Home page you have to click on Friends in order to access your News channel list.
That’s it! Now you can read news and updates from your favorite newspapers and magazines on Facebook, as long as they have a page. You can decide to filter updates from news oriented pages by clicking on the “News” list you created, or just enjoy news and updates from friends on the default News Feed.
Why Facebook is bad news for Google
Malorie Lucich wrote a post on Creating Your Personalized News Channel on the Facebook Blog that explains how useful setting Facebook for news reading can be.
According to ReadWriteWeb, Facebook is the ideal platform for publishers looking to reach maximum distribution:
- Hundreds of millions of people are on Facebook and are familiar with its interface
- Facebook’s social features to discuss around news encourage reader interaction and expand distribution to the public
- People are used to read partial feeds on Facebook: News excerpts encourage clicks through to read the whole story
Facebook can monetize Ad views and become a serious competitor for Google News. Social Search could be the right countermove by Google, but for people who are already on Facebook, being able to read news, share news items and discuss them with friends could win the battle for Facebook.
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