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The Guardian is turning a profit with its “frictionless sharing” Facebook app, director of digital development Tanya Cordrey says, having generated enough ad revenue to cover the development costs. She also predicted that thanks to this app the Guardian will soon get more digital readers via social media than via search. That would stand in sharp contrast to most news sites, which get twice as much traffic from search engines than social media, according to PEJ’s State of the News Media report.
In other Facebook app news, The Onion just launched its own automatic-sharing app called “Our Dumb Readers,” offering to “Shove The Onion down your friends throats.” And the Yahoo News homepage now heavily features friends’ reading activity for logged-in users who participate in its frictionless sharing app. The Onion and Yahoo both chose to build the sharing apps into their own websites, rather than embed an app on Facebook.com like the Guardian or The Washington Post.
Earlier: How news orgs are reaching millions through Facebook’s new apps (Poynter)