Facebook has rolled out an innovative newsgathering tool for journalists that will help them in scanning the information which is available on the site and also assists the reporters to file stories from the massive information on Facebook and on its photo-sharing app Instagram. It seems that Facebook is competing with microblogging website, Twitter which is already regarded as journalist friendly. It is well-known that Twitter is the biggest source of breaking news for reporters and now Facebook is also walking in the same path of Twitter by launching a newsgathering tool called Signal for the Journalists.
The newsgathering tool which is launched by Facebook is called Signal. It is a free tool that will help journalists to track information regarding the relevant trends, photos, videos, and posts from nearly 1.5 billion Facebook users and Instagram’s 300 million users for storytelling and reporting. All this relevant content can be viewed on facebook via Signal, the new newsgathering tool.
Andy Mitchell, the Director of Media Partnerships, on Facebook website, posted as:
“We have heard from journalists that they want an easy way to make Facebook a more vital part of their newsgathering.”
“We are excited to introduce Signal, for Facebook and Instagram, a free discovery and curation tool for journalists who want to source, gather, and embed newsworthy content from Facebook and Instagram, across news, culture, entertainment, sports, and more – all in one place,” she wrote.
Advantages of Signal – Newsgathering Tool
Facebook has rolled out Signal which is a newsgathering tool that helps journalists to view current trending news. Facebook seems to follow Twitter by launching this new tool on facebook. However, there are many benefits for the reporters by using this latest newsgathering tool. Here are the advantages of Signal:
- It provides journalists to access multiple highly sorted newsfeeds of public content.
- Users can sort out the trending topics easily and quickly.
- Journalists can view current resonating news on Facebook and the share it publicly so as to spread it virally.
- Signal is an innovative tool that gives journalists a universal spread of what’s truly trending over the board via Trending Now.
- This platform also helps journalists identify the news that are just driving to spike in their viral-ness through a new feature called Emerging Trends.
- Journalists can access lists of public figures ranked by who is being mentioned the most on Facebook, including real-time conversations across politicians, authors, actors, musicians, sports teams, players and more.
“Search functionality makes it easy to surface content directly related to a story or topic they are tracking,” Mitchell added.
“Using location-tag and topic-related search functionality, journalists can search Instagram for public posts related to specific hashtags, associated with specific public accounts, or tagged with locations using an interactive global map,” she further posted.
In terms of look and appearance, Signal seems to have got motivated and inspired from applications like Tweetdeck. Through this new tool, journalists can group pages and profiles to appear in specific feeds so that they can easily monitor public reactions from U.S. Senators. They can also build a dedicated news feed, called a “collection” just for specific profiles.
How to Use Signal on Instagram
On Instagram, journalists will be able to use the social networking site’s advanced search and location features to follow trends and view public posts inundating news events happening across the world. This content can then be saved into custom collections similar to Facebook and then embedded or integrated online or broadcast news. In the same way, the users of the Signal tool can enter in particular Instagram handles and be presented with a curated news feed for Instagram posts.
This is just the latest tool released by Facebook to keep journalists coming back to the site and it seems to be a plan by the social media giant in order to lure Twitter users by launching this tool over Facebook and Instagram. Currently, the Signal tool is available to journalists only in the US.