- Labeled Facebook News, the new tab “gives people more influence over the stories they see and the opportunity to discover a wider range of their news interests directly within the Facebook app,” as Facebook said.
- The initiative follows the call from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to promote “quality journalism” and help readers to separate professional content from viral hoaxes.
On Friday, It started rolling out its new “News Tab” featuring professional content, the social network’s latest move to encourage reporting and shed its image as a form of misinformation.
The news section will be distinct from the user’s usual feeds and will include content from partner news organizations, with Facebook focusing on both human healing and algorithmic “personalization.”
Labeled Facebook News, the new tab “gives people more influence over the stories they see and the opportunity to discover a wider range of their news interests directly within the Facebook app,” as Facebook said.
The initiative follows the call from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to promote “quality journalism” and help readers to separate professional content from viral hoaxes.
“We spoke to news organizations about what they would like to see included in a news tab, how to show their stories and what insights to provide,” Facebook vice president of news partnerships Campbell Brown and product manager Mona Sarantakos said in a statement.
Zuckerberg pointed to a “big announcement” on news and journalism earlier this week and pointed out that the new feature would highlight “high-quality news, not just social media.”
Facebook is expected to pay for some of the news organizations that will contribute to th Tab but still have full details to be released.
The social network has collaborated with over 200 news agencies including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CBS News, Cnn, Fox News, Boston Globe, Bloomberg and Vanity Fair.
Facebook said it would release an initial test that would “present local original reporting by surfacing local newspapers from the country’s largest metro areas, starting with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington DC, Miami, Atlanta, and Boston.”
Earlier attempts at bringing news content to the platform were introduced in the form of Instant articles, which like Google Amp Pages surfaced news articles in a quick, light and mobile-friendly format hosted by Facebook. Facebook used to insert ads into the pages and shared the revenue with publishers. Facebook and Google have both been criticized in the past for not sharing sufficient ad revenue with publishers.
