Social media is massively disrupting the online news industry

The era of online publishers may be coming to its end. More and more statistics are showing that people receive news from sites such as Facebook rather than going to traditional media sources. Furthermore, once people read news from social outlets, they generally discuss the stories on their on Facebook and Twitter pages rather than on the sites where the pieces originated. This means, online publishers are losing traffic as a result of social media rather than experiencing further growth. Since Facebook announced its new “Instant Articles” feature, which allows anyone to publish articles almost automatically, the threat is becoming even more real. After all, if anyone can produce content with automatic access to a built-in audience as well as conversational tools, why would anyone ever need authentic online news sources? This is the dilemma the industry is currently facing--and the signs are…