#7: Customized curated news

11.08.16

We’ve already talked about a pervasive milieu of mistrust, so the rise of customizable, curated news comes as no surprise. The ‘echo chamber’ is alive and well, and will only continue, posing a challenge to those of us looking to break through and deliver a message to multiple audiences while channels are becoming hardened silos.

For example, Facebook’s algorithm might be one-part black magic, feeding you what news topics are trending among your networks, but it can’t control everything you see. Any of us can simply choose to add pages, remove feeds (or friends) and make the platform what we want it to be. The same is true on other social sites as well as traditional media platforms. We’ve come a long way since the customized Yahoo! News homepage, but we’ve been headed in the direction of customized, curated news for a while – and this trend will continue.

After all, it’s natural for people to only want to get the news they’re interested in and, consciously or instinctively, seek out news to validate established beliefs and points of view. Yet, this also presents opportunities for communications specialists – we can now reach people who have already identified themselves as interested and, importantly, engaged on certain issues.

This means, in the future, we must continue to hone our ability to accurately identify target audiences utilizing data and analytics, and then tailor and deliver messages in which those audiences are interested.

** This Post is part of our “Next Stop, 2026: 10 Communications Trends for the Next 10 years.” To read the full post – click here. **