At the 2007 World Economic Forum, when asked by a newspaper publishers how papers could create community for readers, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had notoriously answered: “You can’t.”

Nevertheless they are trying. MySun was launched last October. Users can create personal profiles and upload personal images. They can also comment on most news articles and participate in online chats. Last but not least, users can create a blog accessible to other Sun readers.

My Telegraph was launched in May, and its blogs are “more feature rich,” according to the Press Gazette. Users can tag their postings, each blog has its RSS feed, and users can vote on whether they agree or not with a blog’s entries.

The moderation of user-generated content is often difficult for newspapers. In the case of the Telegraph and the Sun, they rely on readers to alert the papers of any unsuitable content. Although “there is always a risk that what the publisher’s lawyers might define as “unsuitable”, their audience may find perfectly fine,” reported the Press Gazette. The papers also include feeds linking to user content on their homepages.

Both services also offer personalized news, to a moderate extent (this is probably the area that requires most development, and would benefit both newspapers and consumers). MySun users have access to a list of headlines that match their declared preferences. My Telegraph users are provided with an RSS reader that is preset to link back to feeds from multiple news sources, including The Telegraph, BBC, Planet Rugby and Motley Fool.

Increased personalization is undoubtedly one of the future evolutions in the news industry, but it is far from being developed yet. It would be interesting to get figures pointing to the effects of these personalization options on traffic (USA Today’s website had reportedly lost traffic in the months following its relaunch with social networking features).

“The Sun and The Telegraph are really showing how this can be used to a paper’s advantage. Their websites now better reflect the concerns and interests of their users, who get to write about them in their own words,” concluded the Press Gazette.

Source: Press Gazette through IFRA Executive News Service