Rockville Central To Become Facebook-Only News Outlet

The same week local news website TBD announced a massive reorganization and planned layoffs, one of the sites in its blog network Rockville Central declared it would become a Facebook-only news outlet.

The local Patch site, Rockville Patch, chronicled the plans for Rockville Central's unprecedented shift from a website to Facebook only.

Rockville Patch reported that on March 1 "the site would go dormant" and new posts would appear exclusively on Facebook, according to Rockville Central editors.

“There’s this big party,” Editor Cotte Griffiths said about Facebook in an interview with Nieman Lab. "It’s likely only to get bigger. And we want to be in there.”

Founder and publisher Brad Rourke told Patch.com the move was made in part because Facebook is already the No. 2 traffic source for Rockville Central and a survey found 45 percent of its readers are also Facebook users.

Griffiths provided a further breakdown to Nieman Lab, noting that of the site's 20,000 monthly hits, 2,000 are from Facebook.

Nieman Lab's Megan Garber notes that the challenge for Rockville Central is it won't be able to sell ads on its page (but Facebook will), though Rourke and Griffiths insist this isn't a deterrent. They said they're more interested in engagement than profit.

Comments

[yourmotherwasahamster]

09:52 AM on 03/01/2011

Well I'll never read it. I'm one of the 27 people left on the planet that is not on FB.

[FoxxxRob]

02:34 PM on 02/28/2011

As long as they don't contact old high school flames...http://bit.ly/eWsOzh

[AbsurdHero]

01:30 AM on 02/26/2011

Hmm... I have more Facebook fans than this paper. I'm not sure this is really national news, guys.

[fredvh]

07:58 PM on 02/25/2011

i know it's not environmentally friendly, but there is nothing like sitting down in the morning with a cup of coffee and a newspaper.

[Gentleman Agitator]

11:29 AM on 02/26/2011

Yes, it is something visceral, like a book that you can touch and interact with. A computer screen is just not the same.

[fredvh]

06:24 PM on 02/27/2011

times sure have changed.

[greyK]

05:23 PM on 02/25/2011

I'm probably the only person on earth that doesn't and refuses to have a facebook account. hopefully the site allows access without being forced to get one.

[Smitty2000]

06:36 PM on 02/25/2011

I'm also the only person in the world not on facebook.

[greyK]

12:17 AM on 02/26/2011

glad we're not especially since Zuckerburg has now sold all that data. my background in info sys mgt made me real leary of social networks because of data mining. can you imagine how much ppl are going to know and find about about other ppl. and it was given voluntarily and that info is no longer theirs and can be used in anyway the new owners see fit.

[TerribleMuriel]

09:52 PM on 02/25/2011

no facebook here either and I still get a daily newspaper delivered to my house.

[greyK]

12:22 AM on 02/26/2011

I still like the feel of paper and books in my hands too. someone offer me a kindle and I turned it down. I borrowed one and it's a great gadget especially to travel with, I'm just not into it.

[Brad Rourke]

12:48 PM on 02/25/2011

Sorry, one more thing. We've been in existence since June 2007 and have been on multiple platforms from Blogger to Worpdress to self-hosted Wordpress. Considered Drupal but it never took. I have been blogging since 1996 at least . . . we aren't new to this online stuff. This is an experiment to see if this move will work for us in this particular circumstance. Probably not for everybody. :-)

(Don't mean to brag but I wanted to make it clear we're not just a bunch of doofuses. Although, maybe you'll disagree!)

[Brad Rourke]

01:13 PM on 02/25/2011

Oy vey, I thought I had posted another reply before this. Brad Rourke, founder of Rockville Central here.

In THAT post that inexplicably did not appear, I pointed out that Rockville Central is a relatively small local hub and we do not have a profit motive -- we are a volunteer community resource. So while it would not make sense for a local newspaper to do something like this, we do think it makes sense for us.

Looking at our data, FB is the greatest driver of traffic for us after Google -- the article has an incorrect figure. We get 2,000 per week (not per month) from FB. But our goal is not traffic, it is interaction, and we feel that is happening on FB.

We are taking steps to make sure we archive our stuff ongoing so just in case things blow up we are not high and dry.

Thank you, everyone, for the great comments, both pro and con!

[fredvh]

07:59 PM on 02/25/2011

good for you for being a volunteer community service. this world needs more of that.

[Cranmer1549]

10:12 AM on 02/25/2011

And then they'll abandon Facebook in a couple of years when the next new thing comes along...

[Steve Magruder]

09:49 AM on 02/25/2011

But what if Facebook goes into decline and eventually shuts down? Then you'll have nothing.

[JackHoffman]

04:15 AM on 02/25/2011

"the site's 20,000 monthly hits..." -- huh? Am I missing something here? Under 700 hits a day and this is a story?

[mikeyaz17]

09:46 AM on 02/25/2011

as a creative director for a media company from print to on line to broadcast to social to mobile and beyond, yes it is a story... its interesting that a media company would foresake their own news site to completely facebook when you factor in the revenue nugget model... it may not be the sexiest or biggest media story, but none the less its an interesting one..

[Opening Shares]

12:54 AM on 02/25/2011

That sounds like a mistake to me. The impact of advertisements on web sites has a lot to do with the distinction of the web site's design. Advertising on something that is such a standard format disconnects it from the memory of the story. When someone remembers a story on the web, the ad is also in that person's memory. That's my theory on impactful web advertisement anyway.

[JackHoffman]

04:26 AM on 02/25/2011

Flawed.

[Opening Shares]

01:22 PM on 02/25/2011

My confidence is shattered, I'll never theorize about anything again. Wait, how exactly is it flawed? Or is that just a standard response to any theory you happen to read on threads? I would care so much to know. Or let me guess- "The Social Network" was your all time favorite movie and you have hundreds of hours invested in "Farmville."

[Leviathan21]

10:44 PM on 02/24/2011

Who's their target audience? Thirteen-year-olds?

[JackHoffman]

04:25 AM on 02/25/2011

No. You.

[Leviathan21]

07:02 AM on 02/25/2011

I am their target audience? 

Well, they'll have a hard time reaching me on Facebook.

[breakingpoint]

10:08 PM on 02/24/2011

here hoping they get hacked

[nomadrdw]

10:03 PM on 02/24/2011

considering that facebook has been down for about 5 hours now, i wonder how they feel?

[Jonathan Usher]

08:11 PM on 02/24/2011

Big mistake. Better to own your content and medium. Just set up a wordpress website/blog (like Huff Post and integrate with Facebook and Twitter. You don't own your facebook page - facebook does.

[JackHoffman]

04:25 AM on 02/25/2011

I agree.

[Adam Childers]

08:03 PM on 02/24/2011

I think its a good way to save money and it would definitely have a target audience. My news feed on Facebook contains Huffington Post, BBC, PBS, NPR, Al-Jazeera, and a couple others. Its usually the first place I see breaking news because its constantly updated.