Facebook News Tab Launches In The UK And Pays News Publishers
We have seen Facebook having several years of conflicts with news publishers accusing Facebook of using and stilling their content.
Social Media has affected in many ways the news industry in the last 5 years, media companies have struggled with dwindling advertising revenue and print sales as content has moved online and it is available for free.
In April last year, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said the coronavirus pandemic has made the situation for newspapers even worse.
It called on the British government to impose a tax on global tech giants to help struggling publishers.
Therefore, Facebook launched the Facebook News Tab, which is the social network's own attempt to address the long-running friction between it and news publishers.
It was launched in the US at the end of 2019 and last Tuesday in the UK. It is only available on the Facebook mobile app.
The first publishers in the US to sign a deal with Facebook were; The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and BuzzFeed. Several major news publishers in the UK, including Channel 4, Financial Times, Sky News, and The Guardian have signed deals with Facebook to provide content now. The Economist and The Independent were already on board by the time Facebook announced it.
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Last week Google threatened to pull out of Australia if they are forced by law to enter commercial agreements with news publishers.
"Our goal has always been to work out the best ways we can support the industry in building sustainable business models," Facebook said in its blog post about the UK launch.
"As we invest more in news, and pay publishers for more content in more countries, we will work with them to support the long-term viability of newsrooms", said Zuckerberg.
Facebook says that they are going to pay publishers for content that is not already on the platform and for original reporting.
But if we remember, Mark Zuckerberg said in 2018 that he wouldn't pay publishers for content. Clearly, he had to consider his decision due to all the conflicts they are experiencing.
Other publishers that have signed a deal with Facebook are; Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire and the Midland News Association.
Facebook News will be curated by a team of human editors similar to the way Apple News works. It will be led by a feature called Today’s Stories, which contains the day’s top events.
The tab includes dedicated sections for business, entertainment, science and technology, health, and sports. If you subscribe to one or more of the publishers in the tab, you can view those subscriptions in a dedicated section.
It also highlights the most relevant national stories of the day. News articles will continue to appear in News Feed as they do today.
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| theverge.com |
I wonder how many people will use the News Tab on Facebook, because we all have already our favourite newspaper apps like CNN, BBC, Yahoo News or Apple News and those apps don't even need to be opened to read the news, they show on your phone automatically or they even send you news notifications to your home screen, while with Facebook you will need to press on your Facebook app ad then press on the News tab.
We can't deny the News Industry will benefit from this feature, maybe even Google will consider their position about this in the near future.
Mili Ponce
Former Computer Engineer, Entrepreneur, Keynote Speaker on Digital Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Social Media Strategist, eCommerce Business Mentor, Trainer, Writer, Blogger, Mother, Daughter, Dreamer.
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Reviewed by Mili Ponce
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Thursday, January 28, 2021
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