Blick tests Facebook's new breaking news feature

Facebook has not made any new friends among the media and publishers with the alogithm changes communicated at the beginning of the year. The newsfeed is once again focusing more on the user and increasingly ignoring the contributions of media and companies - as long as they don't pay for reach.

Note on the subject: We asked the Swiss media - you can read what they have to say about the alogrithm changes in the current Werbewoche 5/2018.

With the Breaking News feature, which Facebook is currently testing, publishers regain some control over their posts: They can classify whether a news item is particularly important - and thus give it more attention.

As Facebook pointed out in a Blogpost writes last Tuesday, the feature has already been tested in the U.S. from December to January with a group of local and national publishers. The results sound promising: a 4 percent higher click-through rate, 7 percent more likes, 4 percent more comments and 11 percent more shares were given to posts published as "breaking news."

Now the test is being extended to the rest of the world. 50 more publishers from Europe, Australia, and North and Latin America will be able to try out the new feature in their everyday Facebook lives. While there are four media titles in Germany - Spiegel Online, Zeit Online, Stern and Focus Online - only one medium was selected in Switzerland, Blick.ch.

"Facebook's Breaking News indicator is a great way for Ringier and the Blick Group to reach our readers on social media using breaking news," says Roger Hämmerli, Head of Social Media at Blick-Gurppe, when asked by Werbewoche. "I think it's one of many measures on the part of Facebook that we'll see in the future to verify news."

Hämmerli knows why Blick.ch was chosen in Switzerland: "Ringier has been working very closely with Facebook for years and has a lively exchange with the platform. The collaboration now enables us to participate in these very feature tests." In the German-speaking world, he says, Ringier is the only brand apart from the German colleagues mentioned above that can benefit from the test. "It proves to us that our cooperation is also appreciated by Facebook."

In the current testing, Blick.ch is allowed to include one breaking news item per day and five additional ones per month. "There are no limits to the variety and type of posting - link post or livestream," explains Hämmerli. "The team therefore specifically selects the news in collaboration with the editorial team, which are provided with the indicator. We try to find a good mix of locally and internationally relevant articles that appeal to our readers."

Whether Facebook officially introduces the breaking news feature and makes it available to all other media will be decided by the findings from the tests currently underway. (hae)