Gadgetory

technology companies want to decide which news stories you read I'm Bridget Carey this is your cnet update social media isn't just where you catch up with friends it's where many people are getting their news first and you're seeing all the major players facebook twitter google even linkedin making the call on which news stories show up in your feeds the other week Apple revealed its upcoming news app for iPhones and iPads and Apple is hiring journalists to oversee which stories get promoted but one can't help but question if it'll limit how much you see about stories critical of Apple twitter is putting its own twist on the news with a project called lightning reports say it will organize and curate tweets based on live events such as a sports championship the Oscars or when a big breaking news story is developing twitter has always been a place to go for following breaking news but in this case the service will be selecting its own highlights of live event tweets you would see these selected tweets in a separate section on the Twitter app coming out later this year Google's news lab worked with storyfull to create the YouTube newswire it'll be a feed of videos on news events gathered by the journalists working at storyfull who also worked to verify the clips and source material this team is mining through social media to find what people are sharing and giving it context tie to today's news stories it's how YouTube is going to highlight citizen journalism but then you have some sites moving in a negative direction linkedin a job hunting Network has also crafted a computer algorithm to pick what you should read LinkedIn redesigned its news app pulse and to be completely honest linkedin roomba app the original pulse pulled in a feat of all the headlines for any outlet that you selected I personally used it to quickly scan through all the stories from every technology publication in one screen but LinkedIn just launched a brand new version of app that takes away all control the new pulse tells you what to read based on your profile picking a handful of stories relating to your resume and the people you're connected to the old pulse app is gone from the App Store but it will still work for people for another year before shutting down such a shame Facebook took a similar approach last year with its paper app picking articles it deems as most important for the day but on the bright side it seems Facebook may be giving users more control over the feet in their main app the network is testing a new feature called see first a techcrunch reporter spotted the new option on their app you can tell Facebook that you always want to see new posts from this person or this outlet at the top of your feed reports show more people or only getting their news from social media but if you don't take some control your knowledge of the world is narrowed by what Facebook Twitter or LinkedIn thinks you like based on calculations of what you clicked on that's it for this tech news roundup but there's always more at cnet com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey