Spurned by Social Media, Publishers Chase Readers on WhatsApp
The New York Times
News outlets are experimenting with a feature in the world’s most popular messaging app that allows them to send links and headlines directly to followers.
Many digital news publishers have been desperately searching for a life raft. Traffic to news sites has fallen sharply, along with the ad revenue those clicks generate, partly because Google and Facebook decided to make news less prominent on their platforms.
Now, some publications have found a glimmer of hope elsewhere: WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging app.
Late last year, the app introduced WhatsApp Channels, a kind of one-way broadcasting system that allows publishers to send links and headlines directly to followers. Numerous outlets are using it as a way to draw in readers and build direct relationships with an audience that is largely outside the United States.
“It has become a huge source of traffic actually, larger than X,” said Marta Planells, senior director of digital news at Noticias Telemundo, the news arm of Telemundo.
The Noticias Telemundo channel on WhatsApp gained more than 30,000 followers in just the first two weeks and now has more than 820,000 followers, Ms. Planells said. The news outlet often creates original content for its channel, such as short videos from reporters on the ground or a poll on a news topic.
“WhatsApp is a big community for Hispanics — it is the platform to go to to talk to family members and friends, outside the U.S. especially,” she said. Meta, which owns the app, says about 1.9 billion of its two billion users live outside the United States.
