Come on, really? Well, it was enough to read this over several sites, including a recent WebProNews article named Do Facebook and Twitter Threaten or Complement the News Industry?. A lot of news syndications have handles online and I doubt they are hurting. In fact, the choice to have an internet handle, I am pretty sure it has been a great help. People are spending more time online than they did years ago, so of course, even big news stations want a piece of the attention. In fact, Nielsen Ratings published in December 2009 that users were spending over 5 and a half hours on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. Apparently this was an 82% increase from 2008’s statistics.
However, let me share this. Those social networks are made of people sharing information from various sources, including news sites like Yahoo!, CNN, MSN, TechCrunch, Mashable, and more. There is a wealth of information being passed around and retweeted or shared. This takes nothing away from news sites. Social network sites are a means to share the news with others who have similar interests. I do not have to be the one to tell those reading this article. You only have to watch your Twitter streams to see it happening in real time everyday.
So no… I do not think social network sites are hurting the news industry. Maybe it is hurting the small time news that might want to look toward having their own handle to keep or attract more readers/ viewers.
Do you feel social networking sites might be hurting the news industry?
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Mark McCulloch