Facebook is Eating the World

"Facebook is Eating the World."

That was the title of a an article in Columbia Journalism Review that went viral in March.

In, author Emily Bell noted that "something really dramatic is happening to our media landscape, the public sphere, and our journalism industry . . . our news ecosystem has changed more dramatically in the past five years than perhaps at any time in the past five hundred."

And what is that change? "Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything," she writes.

"It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security. The phone in our pocket is our portal to the world."

And what are the implications? She notes two things.

First, news publishers have lost control over distribution. Second, "the inevitable outcome of this is the increase in power of social media companies."

And what is behind this change? The mobile revolution.

"Because of the revolution in mobile, the amount of time we spend online, the number of things we do online, and the attention we spend on platforms has exploded," she writes.

And since the majority of American adults are Facebook users, that is also where they now get their news.

Bell cites a report from the Pew Research Center which found that around 40 percent of American adults today  consider Facebook a source of news.

This is both good and bad for the media, she says. On the one hand, it provides new opportunities to distribute content.

On the other hand, it  narrows the choices the media has to share that content, and requires them to surrender control to businesses like Facebook--as are well all.

"With billions of users and hundreds of thousands of articles, pictures, and videos arriving online every day, social platforms have to employ algorithms to try and sort through the important and recent and popular and decide who ought to see what," she says.

"And we have no option but to trust them to do this."

As Bell points out, we have little or no insight into how each company (Facebook or Google) is sorting its news.

"If Facebook decides, for instance, that video stories will do better than text stories, we cannot know that unless they tell us or unless we observe it."

And yet, Bell sees no way around it.

"It seems most likely that the next wave of news media companies will be fashioned around a studio model of managing different stories, talents, and products across a vast range of devices and platforms," she writes.

"As this shift happens, posting journalism directly to Facebook or other platforms will become the rule rather than the exception. Even maintaining a website could be abandoned in favor of hyperdistribution."

What does this mean for non-profits?

Although we have spent a lot of time and energy working on our websites, the conversation is moving to social media.

Like for the media, we need to figure out ways to use social media to share our messages.

Unlike the media, however, we lack the resources to make much of an impact on things like Facebook. 

Which makes me wonder: Is this an opportunity for like-minded groups to pool their resources to try to make a bigger splash in social media?

What if we agreed to share one Facebook aggregator page on a subject like poverty or water or hunger? A page that was as up-to-date and as technologically sophisticated as possible?

Maybe by pooling our resources and expertise we can create enough energy to stay up on the changes and provide content in a way that works well with Facebook, and with the people who want to learn more about the work we do.

It's a big challenge. But unless we figure out a way to play this game, like the media we will find ourselves sidelined and voiceless--just like the poor and hungry and vulnerable people we are trying to speak for.