Huffington Post, Facebook sync up on social news
Facebook has partnered with liberal news outlet The Huffington Post in an officially sanctioned implementation of its Facebook Connect product.
Called HuffPost Social News, the new site aggregates Huffington Post stories that a given user's Facebook friends have recommended or commented on, and shares the user's Huffington Post activity on their Facebook profiles in turn.
It's a concept fairly similar to TimesPeople, the sharing service that The New York Times launched last year.
"Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news--both the stories they love and the stories they hate--with friends," Eric Hippeau, Huffington Post's still-new CEO, said in a release. "It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends."
This use of Facebook Connect is unusual because Facebook typically does not undertake many official partnerships with third-party sites when it comes to its developer APIs. And this particular partnership may come under some scrutiny: The Huffington Post, which began as a political news site and has since expanded into many other areas of coverage, is controversial--not only in terms of its partisan leanings (it was co-founded by left-of-center pundit Arianna Huffington) but because the majority of its bloggers are unpaid and because some critics have argued it relies too heavily on third-party content that it doesn't always pay for.
But the social network's executives appear to have given The Huffington Post their stamp of approval, at least when it comes to the site's model for news consumption.
"The Huffington Post has led a revolution in how people discover and consume news," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, herself a veteran of the political world, said in a release. "With the integration of Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News is now leading the way to make news even more of a social experience, giving people new ways to share and filter news and current events through their networks of friends on Facebook."
Facebook likely hopes that this partnership will be a sort of example to the news industry--which is obviously looking for some new ideas right now--and that other media outlets will, in turn, build similar products.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
I'm guessing, but I think waht billye_jackson2000 is expressing is the uncomfortableness with Facebooks lack of transparency around what they and other sites are doing with your data. FB simply says "we will grab everything we can find about you from all over the web" in severe legalese, and so people just see the effects and get scared and don't understand. Frankly, I think FB is not right for not being more upfront about this, and Huffpo is as well.
Fox news isn't tracking your every move and relating it to whatever else you watch on cable, and selling that data to advertisers. They have to get users survey data from Neilsen and even that is just a guess. Online, they know for sure.
And considering all the advertisers use flash cookies now, that can't be wiped in your browser (even though last week they claimed to change the code.. ) unless you go deep into the bowels of your computer, which most users don't know how to do, people are understandably wary.
I think FB has some real issues to answer for and are not treating us well as users in a partnership as they attempt to monitize their site.
mary
The assertion that canceling one's Facebook account because of this outrage is like canceling your cable service because you don't like Fox news is just silly. The individual didn't say he was going to cancel his ISP and stop browsing - he is just wisely refusing to support Facebook. If you don't like Fox News, stop watching - but you can still keep your cable service.
- by Pegs56 August 31, 2009 8:00 AM PDT
- Funny, I just logged in & saw the option to log on to c/net with my Facebook account. I don't see anyone objecting to that?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(11 Comments)As for the story, I am a member of the HuffPo forum and have a Facebook account (which I rarely use). You have to sign up for the Social News option, it isn't automatic. Then, when you post a comment on HuffPo, you are given the option to also post it to your Facebook account - again, it isn't automatic.
Going by the 10 comments here as I type, none of you are likely to be on Huffington Post anyway, so why do you feel a need to cancel your Facebook account? Re-read my first line. Are you going to cancel your c/net acct. because it can be tied to your Facebook acct.?
The only thing I don't like about the Social News option (posted as still in Beta) is that I thought it would go only to the Facebook pages of people who are "fans" or friends on HuffPo, not everyone I know on Facebook. I try not to force my political views on others & some don't want to be bothered with politics. Otherwise, it's shaping up to be an interesting blend.