Facebook wants to end the ‘I read it on Facebook’ problem

Facebook today announced a feature designed to increase visibility on the platform. Publishers, as of today, can add several logos to a new Brand Asset Library (shown below). These logos will then appear next to anything published by the page, but only in the Trending and Search sections… for now.

The reason we’re seeing the feature now, according to Facebook, is a sharp decline in knowing just where you’re getting your news. Answers like, “I read it on Facebook,” are becoming increasingly common, although Facebook doesn’t publish much content aside from its official blogs and press releases.

A survey by Pew Research Center backs this up: only 56 percent of respondents could recall the source of an article when they clicked a link from social media sites.

This weeklong study reveals that when individuals followed a link to a news story, they were more often than not able to associate that link with a particular news source. If they had followed a link, individuals were asked to name the specific news outlet(s) they were taken to. On average, online news consumers named a source 56% of the time.

It’s a small change, but anything that brings increased visibility to publishers is always welcome. It remains to be seen whether this will have any effect on remembering the source of content found on social media.