NPR's Bringing Audio To Facebook In New Experiment

NPR has a new experiment to see if "audio can go viral," and first in line to facilitate its' experiment is Facebook, where users will soon see NPR audio clips directly in their News Feed. The audio will first come this month as part of a "brief preview," and will expand starting in early January when NPR will publish several clips on the social network every day for a month.

Podcasts are a big deal again, and one of the most well known sources of audio news is NPR. How people get their daily news has changed greatly over the years, though — most people get their news from Facebook, and so it makes sense NPR would target that social network for its experiment.

Facebook users will only see the audio clips if they're on desktop using a Web browser or if they're using the social network's iOS app. It isn't clear why Android users are being left out. NPR's own editors will curate the audio being published on Facebook; it will be sourced from, among other things, NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

Hopefully you're not in the throes of Star Wars fatigue, because NPR's very first audio clip will be from a podcast episode examine whether there's anything to be learned from the fictional universe's politics. If you haven't already seen it, you can find that clip here.

SOURCE: NPR