Twitter Battles Facebook for Social Media News Distribution: PR Implications

Newspaper and magazine revenue and readership have trended downward for years, prompting publications to reduce journalists and news space. Many print publications have already met their demise; many others are fighting to survive. Viewership of television news networks is also down substantially, almost 20 percent since 2009, according to Pew Research Center.  

The shrinking of the traditional news business has greatly reduced earned media opportunities for public relations.

Nonetheless, news still interests the public. News consumption has simply migrated to social media. More people now obtain their news through Facebook and Twitter. The number of Twitter users finding their news through that network increased from 52% in 2013 to 63% this year, according to Pew Research. Facebook users consuming news on that network grew from 47% to 63%.

Social media platforms will surely grow in their impact on news distribution as they develop more convenient features and timely information in an effort to compete for viewers and advertisers.

Twitter has its Moment

Twitter took a major step to increase its value as a news channel this month by introducing Moments, a curated section that organizes tweets into breaking news subjects. You can find the new section on Twitter’s top navigation bar next to a lightning bolt symbol.

“Moments represents a real shift in our thinking,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said during its third-quarter earnings call. “It questions the reverse chronological timeline. Moments is a bold new experience that I think does question a lot of our fundamentals. Moments is one piece that makes all of Twitter better and easier to understand.”

Without getting into specifics, Dorsey said the company will introduce more “bold experiences” over the coming year.

Moments, formerly called Project Lightning, is part of Twitter’s strategy to simplify its interface and boost user growth, which has been slow compared to other networks. Its user base grew 8% to a 307 million monthly active users worldwide since last year.

Facebook as a Social Media Newspaper

Dorsey may need many additional bold experiences to surpass Facebook. With its huge user base of 1.5 billion worldwide and aggressive product development, Facebook holds the best chance to dominate online news distribution.

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced Instant Articles that hosts entire articles from traditional media outlets on its own platform. The advantage for readers is that the articles load significantly faster than articles loaded on the sites owned by the news sources. Instant Articles initially included select articles from nine major media companies and many observers expect it to eventually welcome additional publishers

Although critics lament the move as Facebook’s effort to seize world domination, publishers are likely happy to have its additional referral traffic and ad revenue. Publishers are uncertain how the network’s algorithm will rank the articles in users’ news feeds. However, they’ve noticed that their Instant Articles content is being shared more than links they post to Facebook, partly because of faster load times on phones, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Instant Articles was a factor in the rise of Facebook as a news distribution powerhouse. A study by Parse.ly suggests that the platform has surpassed Google as the top source of referral traffic to online publishers.

In addition, Facebook is testing a Twitter-like app that would let publishers distribute news alerts, according to Business Insider. Users would choose publications and topics they want to follow on the app.

Snapchat – the Up-and-Coming Youngster

Snapchat, the mobile-based, photo-centric, youth-oriented network, could be considered an underdog in the race to distribute news on social media. With about 100 million active daily users, Snapchat lacks Facebook’s huge user base as well as its earning power. However, it is growing quickly and has shown the ability to create innovative products. Its younger user base is not terribly news-focused. The network’s focus on visuals, however, may enable it to deliver a more tabloid-like news experience.

In January, Snapchat launched Discover that some pundits predicted could revolutionize how content is consumed on mobile devices. Users browse animated story teasers from major publishers and can read or view the entire story if they desire.

Snapchat also offers its Live Stories feature that consists of custom-curated photo and video montages pulled from users at popular events like the MTV awards.

Implications for Public Relations

Whatever happens, the evolving social media distribution through social media creates important ramifications for public relations. Successful PR may increasingly depend on obtaining placement in Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. PR pros may need to change how they package content, work with publishers and promote their press releases and announcements.

The trend could change PR professionals’ relationships with media outlets as publishers modify job roles of their reporters and editors to meet the needs of social media networks. PR pros with multimedia skills will gain a competitive advantage.

Twitter may develop a Facebook-like algorithm to that selects news items. If it does, PR pros will strive to decipher the formula to rise to the top of users’ lists.

Some PR pros and others may be rooting for Twitter, due to Facebook’s traditional opaqueness. “There’s a lot more useful data from Twitter about their content, but FB is more like a black box in terms of how it operates. And yet it’s this huge and growing traffic source.” Parse.ly Chief Technology Officer Andrew Montalenti told Fortune.

At the present time, Facebook and other social networks seldom originate news coverage (although journalists do follow Twitter to identify potential local news stories). The social networks still rely on traditional publications to source content. For a story to appear in Facebook – either through Instant Articles or through mention by a Facebook user – the news must first appear in a traditional publication. Even on Facebook, the important traditional publications like The New York Times still have the most clout. That remains unchanged. So, even now, journalist contacts at important print publications remain the gateway to PR success.

Bottom Line: Social media networks continue to create new products for news curation and distribution as more viewers obtain their news through the networks. Twitter recently introduced its Moments tab that organizes tweets around news topics, and Facebook introduced Instant Articles, with more news-focused innovations in development. As social media networks replace local newspaper stands as news distribution channels, savvy PR pros will find ways to make story placements in publications that are most likely to be distributed on social media networks and will figure out how to boost the placement of their articles on the social networks.