How The Economist is using live audio from Facebook

Lucinda Southern of Digiday writes about how The Economist is using Facebook’s live audio feature.

Southern writes, “Since January, The Economist has streamed six audio posts, mostly in the format of discussions between two journalists. The first five featured economics correspondent Soumaya Keynes and columnists Callum Williams or Ryan Avent. These were based on their weekly articles on topics like American employment rates, free-trade agreements, migration in post-Brexit Britain, and whether taxing robots could help struggling workers.

“Last week, it streamed audio from Nigeria, discussing the country’s state of leadership while its president has been absent for six weeks. The stream prompted 198 comments and just under 150 shares, and reached an early peak of around 250 live listeners within the first few minutes, which fell to about 140 listeners for the remainder. The publisher said this is fairly consistent with the other live audios, although the total reach was lower than average. For now, it’s far from a scale play.

“‘Overall there are many positives to draw from our Nigeria broadcast,’ said Archer Hill, a social media writer at The Economist. ‘For one, we held a 30-minute discussion on a fairly niche subject that doesn’t normally get broad coverage. The quality of questions also suggests that our listeners were engaged and interested. We also overcame the technical hurdles of having a correspondent successfully call in from a country with unpredictable connectivity.'”

Read more here.