Oh the Associated Press, our most favorite banned news source. It seems almost monthly they do something that defies logic and/or looks to be a suicidal act. And today brings another oddity.
The AP is using their Twitter feed to tweet out their stories — nothing new there, obviously — but every single one of them links to the story on their Facebook Notes page. It’s not clear how long they’ve been doing this, but Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan noted the oddness of this, and how annoying it is, tonight. The AP obviously has a ton of media partners, and they could easily link to any of those, or even the story hosted on their own site. But no, instead they’re copying all these stories to their Facebook page and linking there for no apparent reason.
As Sullivan notes in a follow-up tweet, “i really miss when people had web sites they owned and pointed at. why lease your soul to facebook. or buzz. or whatever. master your domain.”
What’s really odd about this is the AP’s recent scuffle with Google over the hosting of AP content. The two sides appeared to reach some sort of deal earlier this month (after months of threats and actual pulled content), but now the AP is just hosting all this content on Facebook for the hell of it?
Sure, maybe they think that by hosting the content on Facebook, they’re being impartial with the tweets. But again, why not just use their own site?
When I asked Sullivan to elaborate on this issue, he made a good point, “funny, they seem to get social (twitter & facebook) more than basic SEO (the core of their issues with Google).” Oh the AP; the amusement never ends.