The Post Launches Social Reader As a Newspaper For Facebook

**Waqas** · September 23, 2011

The Washington Post Company has released Social Reader, a newspaper for Facebook.

The Social Reader application, built on Facebook’s new Open Graph, offers users a personalized news reading experience, with front page stories pulled from The Post and its content partners.

Social Reader stories reflect a user’s Facebook profile, interests, “likes” and the stories his friends are reading, as well as trending news topics.

â€œThe Washington Post Social Reader is a way for people to connect around the dayâ€™s latest happenings and discover real-time news with their friends on Facebook,” Donald Graham, chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Company says. “If you know that several of your friends have read a story, youâ€™ll be more interested in it.”

On the front page, stories are displayed as condensed news blurbs with accompanying artwork. Application users can click to view the article in full on Facebook, without being redirected to the source’s site or needing to be a paying subscriber.

Once the user reads an article, the activity is shared with friends and included in the Facebook ticker. The application also recommends additional related stories, and better understands the user’s preferences with repeat usage.

Social Reader places a strong emphasis on news discovery through friends. The “Friends Using Social Reader” section includes the Facebook profile photos of a user’s friends also using the app, and the user can click on a photo to view what a friend is reading. “The What People Are Reading” section is akin to a News Feed and highlights what the user’s Facebook friends are reading via the app in real time.

Content is sourced from the complete digital collections of a dozen different media companies. The Associated Press, Express Night Out, Foreign Policy, GlobalPost, The A.V. Club, Reuters, The Root, SB Nation, Slate, Sugar Inc., WetPaint Entertainment and Mashable are content partners at launch.

Also notable is that Social Reader is ad free — readers get full access to news stories without paywalls or banner ads getting in the way. For now, Graham says he’s satisfied with focusing on creating a rich and compelling news reading experience for Facebook users.

“We’re trying to get the product right. We’re trying to get market share. We’re trying to see how big we can make it,” Graham says. “I want the whole company to learn about social reading and social news,” he adds. “This is part of the future of news.”

Social Reader was announced at Facebook’s f8 conference on Thursday. The Post collaborated with Facebook and its content partners on the initiative and is using Trove, the company’s personalized news aggregation site, to power the experience.