How social media altered the fate of news publishers

“I scrolled through my Facebook feed”,“I was on Instagram checking out other people’s selfies” or even “I read a story I saw on Twitter.”

Apart from it being a regular habit, social media sometimes tend to take over an individuals free time. We are on it before work, in between breaks and sometimes even during and after meals.

Just a few years ago, picking up the newspaper, skimming through its headlines with a hot cup of coffee in hand is a ritual for many. This has now been replaced by a swipe and a tap on an electronic device in order to stay informed.

Internet browsing is also a common sight now whenever a conversation runs dry.

For news organisations, to thrive digitally is no longer an option but a necessity. In the competitive digital media landscape, where the evaluation of how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives for publishers often tied to web traffic, number of unique visitors and visitors’ time spent on site, collectively as content producers and editors, we are shifting our mindset to look at not only the development but also the distribution of stories in a new light.

With the pervasiveness of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, many claim that we are entering a new age where news should now be delivered under 90 seconds or 140 characters or less. This is largely due to the fact that a lot more content consumption are done on mobile applications -- we watch videos, read news and share interesting pieces on-the-go.

A while ago in an article entitled 'How we read news today', I wrote about how the business of news has been forced to evolve to stay relevant to the modern consumers.

Just as news organisations worldwide scrambling to figure out a solid social media strategy, Facebook is at it again. If you are on Facebook for iPhone or Android, chances are you may be reading this article in the form of Instant Articles, where you are able to load the story directly from your respective newsfeed rather than having to tap and link out of Facebook to an external website. The Instant Articles feature enables stories to load much faster in a cleaner presentation. READ: 4 things you need to know about Astro AWANI Instant Articles on Facebook

In December 2015, Astro AWANI started to publish stories to Facebook as Instant Articles. The move to publish directly to a social media platform is not only strategic, but is a no brainer to most publishers. A big chunk of online readers are on mobile and social media. Posting directly on Facebook enable publishers to extend the reach of a particular article beyond posting a link with a headline and teaser.