According to Reuters, more people are happy to have news served up to them based on what they’ve read before rather than news which is chosen for them by journalists. That’s our challenge. Computers may not have replaced reporters, but some extent they’ve begun replacing editors, at least in the eyes of readers.
That’s what Facebook does. It serves up what people want based on what they’ve done before. It’s not unique to Facebook – the sites I work with do the same in the related articles section too.
The risk, of course, is that people become alienated from things they need to know about, but don’t necessarily realise they need to know about. Which makes the second graphic related to this a little more reassuring:
Looks like a winning formula.