Fox News Channel, the channel owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has joined a social network. However, to the surprise of many, Fox News has chosen to use Facebook rather than MySpace, despite News Corporation's ownership of the latter.While several people in the industry believed Fox News' membership to Facebook was due to MySpace's existing relationship with another news channel, namely MSNBC, Fox have stated that it has more to do with the target audience the channel is trying to reach.
Facebook is "currently the leading social network" worldwide, the senior vice president for development at Fox, Joel Cheatwood, told the New York Times. "They also have a user that's a little older and a little more sophisticated.
On Tuesday, Fox will debut their redesigned Facebook page, seemingly using every feature the site offers, including discussion boards, a wall for users' comments, reviews polls and photo submissions. Most important, however, is the new video player designed by Fox specifically for social networking. The video player will allow users to watch Fox videos, create customised playlists, post individual videos on their profiles and share the video clips with friends in the Facebook community.
News channels joining forces with a social network in an effort to connect with news fans worldwide is by no means a new development. MSNBC and MySpace recently worked together on a contest to send two users to the national political conventions. ABC and Facebook also paired up to create a politics section for the presidential primaries, but have since suspended the site.
Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has experienced consistent growth, with the social network site now boasting more than 90 million users. Making it the largest social network in the world and taking it ahead of MySpace. According to a survey by the Pew Research Centre, an independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward the press, politics and public policy issues, 32% of internet users are members of a social network, but only 10% of those members regularly receive news through the sites.
Fox News aim to raise that number through its union with Facebook, with both sides hoping to make a significant enough impact to change the way many internet users gather their news.
