With more than 2 billion users, Facebook for years gave media outlets a shot at a vast audience that could help offset declining circulations. The change will benefit Facebook’s long-term prospects, analysts say, but it will almost immediately harm news publishers that increasingly turned to the social network for distribution. There are various reports that some 25% of news publication referrals come from Facebook, a sign that publishers need Facebook more than Facebook needs publishers. Digital media publishers have been burned before by changes to Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm. In late 2014, the social network tweaked its algorithm to focus on “high-quality” content.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 12, 2018 15:05 UTC