Journalism has started chasing readers on Whatsapp

It’s been just over a year since WhatsApp was introduced in Italy the functionality of the ‘channels’, the famous channels located in the ‘updates’ section. A tab in its own right, separate from the chats we use every day to manage our relationships, more or less close, but which is taking up more and more space and occupying our time. And it is no coincidence that even journalism, affected by the limitations imposed by the algorithms of Facebook and Google, has noticed this, creating a direct line with the reader made up of news and breaking news, links and photos. And if the communication appears apparently one-way, it is not possible to comment on the published posts, the exchange between channel manager and user is very strong. The reason is simple: it is possible to express one’s emotion when faced with the proposed content through an emoji. And it’s all a flourish of hearts, biceps, tears and thumbs up. A sort of emotional exchange made up of expressions and signs.

It is a place that appears more authentic, where there are no toxic comments, insults, swear words, useless and obstinate discussions. No grandstanding, just reading. In short, the keyboard lions find no outlet here (apart from a few middle fingers, here and there) and the author of the post, based on the ‘visual’ reactions, has a series of data and elements at his disposal to understand how it was accepted that content. To follow a channel, users also do not have to provide private information such as phone numbers or email addresses. They sign up and that’s it.

The New York Times, in a long piece, explained how many newspapers or sites on the other side of the ocean are also using Whatsapp channels to get in touch with communities and readers dispersed around the world, for example Hispanic or French. Some companies, such as Telemundo, explain how the traffic generated by this new form of interaction with readers is already higher than that brought by X (especially after the advent of Elon Musk). Of course, the numbers are still low compared to the social platforms most used by users to get information but, being special islands, within one of the most used apps in the world, their growth seems natural and inevitable. Journalists, in such virgin territory, can then experience a new relationship with their followers but knowing full well that unsubscribing from a channel is as easy as subscribing. Therefore, consistency in publication, consistency in the message, continuous care of the needs of one’s silent community is necessary. In short, it is a pact that can become very fragile if the channel is used for clickbaiting or, more generally, if it betrays the initial expectations established only by the reader. The strategy, in Whatsapp channels, therefore, is as valid as the very delicate one we choose for Instagram or TikTok.

The numbers

If we stay in the United States we are talking about channels that are already very popular: CNN, at the beginning of October, flirts with 15 million subscribers, the New York Times is close to 14 million, the Wall Street Journal has almost 5 million. In Great Britain the BBC is about to cross the 10 million mark. But growing data is also recorded by more recent media such as Vox or The Atlantic. And then particular uses and experiments also begin to appear. The Financial Times, for example, has created three vertical channels on specific topics: the user can choose between news on the financial markets (209,000 followers), on the Israel-Hamas war (53,000 followers) and on the elections in the United States (22,000 followers ).

And in Italy? Ansa has 312 thousand registered users, Il Corriere della Sera almost 200 thousand, Repubblica 175 thousand, il Sole24Ore 149 thousand, il Messaggero 46 thousand. Then there are the cases of news channels born ‘digital’: Tgcom24 has exceeded one million subscribers (1.5): Geopop has 1.3; Fanpage is close with 920 thousand; SkyTg24 has 387 thousand; The Post 133 thousand, Will Media 82 thousand. In a market, that of social media, which is increasingly saturated and subject to the mood swings of algorithms, Whatsapp channels seem, for now, to have opened a cleaner window into the information world of the internet, limiting the linguistic and behavioral drift of the accounts, often fake or troll, around the web. It is a race that has just started and is not destined to reward the fastest, the most overflowing, the most superficial in journalistic communication but, on the contrary, it could give satisfaction to all those entities capable of taking care of their own community of curious, and severe, readers.

The role of Meta

And don’t forget, however, that behind the development of the ‘Channels’ there is Meta which, with publishers, has always had a particular relationship, made up of ups and downs, with many attempts to stipulate agreements and alliances, which then faded away. It is therefore difficult to predict the evolution of this new information path: Will it grow? Will he stop in front of the mass of opportunities that each of us has to inform ourselves? Will it change by changing rules and approaches? Considering that the channels have been on track for just over a year, it is probably still too early to understand what the future scenario will be.

Meta’s leaders, writes the New York Times, believe that the channels offer a more targeted and personal way of sending articles and posts to followers, especially since the contents come in the form of updates via SMS (ah, the old, dear, messages). It is, therefore, a different experience from what happens in the Facebook newsfeed where everything is mixed up, mixed up, confused. And it is also very different from the opportunities offered by newsletters, which are increasingly present and increasingly intrusive.

“It’s not like using traditional social media, because the user controls what they want to see and can control it whenever they want”, Alice Newton-Rex, product manager, told the Big Apple newspaper. “In addition to private messaging, people wanted to know more about certain topics, realities and organizations through WhatsApp. They asked us.” Brands, sports clubs, interactive and entertaining realities: the channels offer a lot of content… but in the end it is always the user who builds his list, moving between news, commercial offers and links built over time with companies or sports teams . In this chaos of content, Whatsapp channels represent a new distribution opportunity that the user seems to appreciate. We’ll see until when.