Mediashift's Rich Gordon: Huffington Post's Social News Helps Close Awareness Gap

MediaShift:

News Mixer was one of the first Web sites to take advantage of Facebook Connect to build an engaging social experience around news. It won praise from people interested in conversations around news and, more recently, was recognized by the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism.

NewsMixer, though, was just a demonstration Web site, a prototype designed to show the potential for increasing engagement and improving the caliber of news conversations. This week, one of the top news sites on the Web -- the Huffington Post -- launched a new service (HuffPost Social News) that delivers on that potential. I've been playing around with Social News this week, and it's quite compelling.

Social News is a collaboration with Facebook that connects HuffPost users to their Facebook friends, the news they are reading, and the stories they are commenting on.

Co-founder and Editor-In-Chief Arianna Huffington introduced the application on Monday.

Read the whole story: MediaShift