Facebook held its first journalism meetup last night where it demonstrated several tips and ideas for using the social network as a newsgathering, sourcing and distribution tool.
“The average news organization has seen an increase of referral traffic from Facebook of 300 percent since the beginning of 2010,” said Facebook’s Justin Osofsky, who kicked off the meeting (begins at 3:17 into the video). Vadim Lavrusik — in his first day at Facebook as Journalist Program Manager — then took the stage (at 8:00) to show examples and tips on using Facebook pages. Examples include NYT’s Nick Kristof and KMOV’s coverage of the airport tornado (which they saw on Lost Remote!)
Then a panel of journalists from Washington Post, Mother Jones, CNN and the San Jose Mercury News talked about their own success stories, challenges and ways Facebook can better work with news organizations (beginning at 34:00 into the video).
By the way, Facebook says it will soon post that presentation deck on its Facebook for journalists page. We’ll share it when we see it.