Journalist Jeff Jarvis asked about Facebook’s role in news and journalism, while Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, asked what Zuckerberg how he imagined the evolution of online publication.
Zuckerberg discussed Facebook’s Instant Articles, (http://media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles/) a way for publishers to display their content within Facebook and aiming to cut down the load time before users can access the information.
“[I]f you tap on a news link, since that content isn't stored on Facebook and you have to download it from elsewhere, it can take 10+ seconds to load. People don't want to wait that long, so a lot of people abandon news before it has loaded or just don't even bother tapping on things in the first place, even if they wanted to read them,” Zuckerberg said.
According to him, more traditional models of journalism have a hard time keeping up with fast-paced events. But while smaller, faster news bites are useful, they still can’t replace “the longer and more researched work.”
About online publication, he said, “I think there will be a couple of trends towards richness and speed/frequency,” pointing out that more and videos are being uploaded in addition to text and photos.
“This will continue into the future and we'll see more immersive content like VR. For now though, making sure news organizations are delivering increasingly rich content is important and it's what people want.”
Not all the questions were serious, however. Stephen Hawking asked about a unified theory of gravity and other forces, while Arnold Schwarzenegger asked Zuckerberg about his daily workout regimen and whether or not the machines will win, supposedly referring to his Terminator franchise. — TJD, GMA News
source: gmanetwork.com
