10 February 2011 | Author: N. Hamilton Media copywriter

Hold the press: Facebook eyes news services

Facebook will likely develop innovative media and news services of its own as consumer demand booms for multi-channel digital content, according to Mark Zuckerberg's right-hand man Bret Taylor, who spoke recently to BBC News.

In an exclusive interview, Taylor - Palo Alto's chief technology officer - told BBC that news and media offerings were set to be the "next big tech thing" in the social networking sphere and likened the predicted rise of social news to the established success of social gaming.

"We haven't seen tons of other industries as impacted as games by Facebook, and we think that the next big change is ... probably going to be orientated around media or news, because they are so social. When you watch a television show with your friend, it's such an engaging social activity.

"We think that there's a next generation of start-ups that are developing social versions of these applications; what Zynga is to gaming, they will be to media and news, and we're really excited about that," Taylor said.

The announcement comes hot on the heels of Rupert Murdoch's newly launched iPad publication, The Daily, which arguably shifted the e-publishing landscape by blurring tabloids, magazines, tech and apps into a single digital newspaper geared at an increasingly mobile readership.

Fostering news services for its ubiquitous social portal would also ruffle Mountain View's mad men - with Google News and Google TV likely to have to compete with the Facebook services for the reading and content-viewing audiences needed to pull in display advertising revenues.

Mountain View may be further miffed with Palo Alto soon as well, as the Wall Street Journal forecasted Google and Facebook will duke it out for ownership of Twitter as the microblogging forum warbles its way to a $10 billion dollar takeover.

And with a rich base of TV shoppers, web browsers and e-coupon clippers included in Twitter's 200 million user base, Google would likely fight fierce for a Twitter-boost to its ad revenues and coupon-clipping Groupon rival.

But whether or not Zuck plans to turn media mogul, with social elements such as live Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates appearing alongside relevant news articles in Murdoch's The Daily and well as plug-ins across the web, there can be no doubt news, like search, has turned increasingly social.

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