The circle is round: we're moving back to AOL-like portals

In his first interview as the new CEO of Huffington's Post, Jared Grusd talks about what he calls the "post-social era".

He sees a trend in which the majority of people are changing their behavior on social media from generating content to consuming content.

Additionally, companies like Facebook are taking a new stance towards third party content creators. Rather than referring the customers to their websites, they are now introducing tools to consume third party content on their own (e.g., Facebook) platforms. Recently launched tools are Facebook Instant and Snapchat Discover. Both allow third parties to publish articles directly on Facebook.

In fact, Jared Grusd believes that the circle is becoming round, as these moves by Facebook and others would, in practice, move people back to portal websites such as AOL. The difference remains that the content you see depends on your network and the companies that you follow.

While Jared sees the risk that Facebook will demand an ever increasing share of ad revenue, he also sees the opportunity for Huffington Post to expand globally.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/06/huffpo-jared-grusd--facebook-huffington?CMP=share_btn_link