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Facebook has hurt publishers, so publishers like HuffPost have invested less in promoting content on Facebook, according to Editor in Chief Lydia Polgreen.
“I think that for us, Facebook — both from a monetization perspective and also as a place for us to connect with our audience — it’s just not necessarily been a particularly reliable partner,” Polgreen said at this year’s Code Media at Huntington Beach, Calif.
“I don’t think that’s Facebook’s conscious doing,” she added, “but it’s just the reality of how their business works. So we’ve sought out other ways, to connect with our audience in other ways.”
Polgreen, who took the reins as HuffPost’s editor in chief in December of 2016, said the company spends more time on Apple News and search engine optimization.
“I think it’s partly that it wasn’t necessarily a place where we thought we were going to find an audience that was most interested in what we’re doing,” she said.
“As Facebook became less and less a place where people were going for news, we started to put our efforts elsewhere and we really invested in Apple News and we really doubled down on SEO because it turns out that SEO is really important,” Polgreen continued.
Facebook recently made a major change to its News Feed that surfaced more content from users’ friends and family instead of publishers and other brands. The company says it was in order to make people engage with the content they see.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
