NEW YORK Championing a future where the dissemination of news is less about distribution deals and more about sharing stories among friends and colleagues, news aggregator The Huffington Post has partnered with Facebook to launch HuffPost Social News. The new platform will allow HuffPo users to interact with their Facebook friends.
With just a few mouse clicks, HuffPost Social News allows users to share stories and columns with friends, see what other friends are reading on HuffPo and initiate conversations, all via Facebook Connect.
HuffPo co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington called HuffPost Social News a “digital water cooler.” She sees the platform as further breaking down traditional journalistic boundaries. “The days of publishing pooh-bahs dictating to us what's important and what's not are over,” Huffington wrote in a blog post today. “News has become an important element of community...something around which we gather, connect and converse. We all are part of the evolution of a story now...expanding it with comments and links to relevant information, adding facts and differing points of view.”
For Facebook, the partnership marks another example of the social networking giant courting media companies as it seeks to become a bigger player in content distribution. Last week, NBC Universal announced a similar integration deal with Facebook Connect around online video on its sites. NBC is also using Facebook to preview its upcoming fall sitcom Community.
Nielsen Business Media [1]
Links:
[1] http://mediaweek.com