Facebook begins testing Facebook News with a subset of people in the US across four categories of select publishers: general, topical, diverse, and local news
media company execs, 6 months from now. https://twitter.com/... Peter Kafka / @pkafka : One between the lines note: Regular Facebook newsfeed is Trump Trump and more Trump. New Facebook News, not so much. https://twitter.com/... Peter Kafka / @pkafka : “We want to set a different standard here, that's not a mix of news that your friends and family want to share.” https://twitter.com/... Joeltergeist / @notdetails : siri, show me the most tone deaf thing https://twitter.com/... Gerry Smith / @gerryfsmith : Facebook is finally giving some publishers what they want: $$. But how many people will really visit a separate tab to get news? Story w/ @sarahfrier https://www.bloomberg.com/... Mathew Ingram / @mathewi : Facebook is clearly trying to help the media by giving them lots of untruthful political ads to write about. Thanks Mark! https://twitter.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Ah yet another payoff attempt! https://www.nytimes.com/... via @NYTimes Bill Grueskin / @bgrueskin : Facebook often says it shouldn't be treated like a publisher. With this deal, Facebook will be paying for news, curating news, making editorial judgments around news and ... publishing news. https://www.wsj.com/... Adam Smith / @asmith83 : Congrats to Daily Wire and Diamond and Silk! https://twitter.com/... Zach Leatherman / @zachleat : For the third time in my thirteen year Twitter existance, I will post a link to TechCrunch (this article is *good*): “Meet users where they are, but pull them back to where you live.” https://techcrunch.com/... on the inevitable future calamity that will be Facebook News. Cecilia Kang / @ceciliakang : “We feel acute responsibility because there's obviously an awareness that the internet has disrupted the news industry business model,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in an interview. https://www.nytimes.com/... via @mikeisaac @marctracey Ciarn Mc Mahon / @cjamcmahon : This comes less than a fortnight after an Oireachtas committee heard several social media corps deny that they were publishers with editorial control https://twitter.com/... Mark Scott / @markscott82 : Still not a media organization. Nope, not one bit. Who would think of such a thing?! https://newsroom.fb.com/... Aaron Nagler / @aaronnagler : Why would ANY kind of publisher trust FB ever again? Smh https://twitter.com/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : I concur with @CaseyNewton's assessment here about the potential of Facebook's News tab https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Facebook News is here. But will an audience show up for it? https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : 🤗 “Facebook is expected to generate $19 billion in profits this year. Call me biased, but spending a small fraction of that to please publishers seems like a decent investment.” - @pkafka https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Facebook
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook is applying a familiar playbook to news. In January 2018 it tested the local-news feature Today In in six US cities, then scaled it to 400 cities within a year (Today In's 400-city rollout) — test small, curate with humans plus software, expand. Facebook News follows the same shape, but aimed at national publishers rather than city announcements.
The difference this time is money and curation standards: reporters covering the test note Facebook is finally giving some publishers what they want — payment — while setting an explicit editorial bar, 'a different standard... not a mix of news that your friends and family want to share,' in contrast to a regular feed dominated by political content.
First-order effects
The select publishers in the four categories — general, topical, diverse, local — gain a paid, human-curated distribution surface inside Facebook, decoupled from the share-driven feed where their reach has been eroding.
A subset of US users gets a dedicated News tab whose selection is curated rather than friend-ranked, making Facebook an overt editor of news for the first time at product level.
Second-order effects
Publishers now have leverage to negotiate licensing terms with every large platform, since Facebook's willingness to pay establishes that curated news surfaces carry a price tag.
Local outlets get a second dedicated Facebook surface alongside Today In, concentrating local discovery further into Facebook-owned real estate rather than their own sites.
Third-order effects
If the test graduates to a full launch — as the Today In pattern suggests Facebook intends — platform news distribution splits structurally into two tiers: paid, curated sections for select publishers and an unpaid algorithmic feed for everyone else.
Human curation at scale puts Facebook in the editorial-judgment business, inviting the regulatory and political scrutiny that comes with deciding which four categories of journalism get surfaced and paid.
The trend: Social platforms are carving curated, paid news products out of their algorithmic feeds, turning news distribution from a free reach game into a negotiated licensing market.
Facebook's new section of “trusted” news sources will include Breitbart, a website that featured a section on “black crime” and laundered white nationalist talking points https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@Jessicalessin Except... Facebook including Breitbart is almost certainly a political decision on FB's part. And there are plenty of subscriber-based businesses that both-sides it.
Just to remind everyone , News Corp is boosting a new product from Facebook for journalism , hailing it as a new platform. Is this journalism's Free Basics moment? Where it hands over it's development to an unaccountable business ...or is it politically significant ahead of 2020
Zuckerberg defends having far-right website Breitbart in its news tab: “I think you want to have content that represents different perspectives,” Zuckerberg says, adding that all outlets will still have to comply with standards Facebook has set.
Great question from @sarafischer to MZ: Will FB's human editors for the news tab include stories that are critical of FB? She points out that Bloomberg News doesn't cover Mike Bloomberg, a policy MZ didn't know about...
This is a) correct, b) encouraging, c) very, shall we say, interesting given how Facebook has treated journalists who cover the company in the past. https://twitter.com/...
Breitbart is included in this list of “trusted” publishers. It's a site that absolutely does not adhere to the guidelines, and yet https://www.bloomberg.com/... pic.twitter.com/SdE3H9zrCI
Ahaha ... oh no, he didn't. He did!? He did. I especially love how he stole Elizabeth Warren's line. “We have a plan to help fix that.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
A drop in the bucket for Facebook but roughly the total U.S. daily newspaper circulation, which has been falling, according to Pew: Mark Zuckerberg Predicts 30 Million People Will Want Facebook News via @michaelfnunez https://www.forbes.com/...
Facebook will pay publishers, including @nytimes What's more notable is this rare mea culpa from Zuckerberg: “We feel acute responsibility because there's obviously an awareness that the internet has disrupted the news industry business model,” https://www.nytimes.com/...
FB's history is clearest on this subject: trusting the company to be a good partner has never been wise. Why the Facebook News tab shouldn't be trusted - TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/...
Facebook is paying publishers for the same reason it structures political ads. Zuckerberg is buying political power and influence. https://techcrunch.com/...
Facebook's human-curated news section: “For heavily debated topics, curators will aim to curate stories that represent multiple perspectives on the issue.” https://www.niemanlab.org/...
Thompson puts Zuckerberg on the spot and asks whether FB can pay local papers. He touts the separate product they've been developing: Today In, a local tab. He says he hopes to have financial relations there. Then he touts FB's $300m commitment to news.
Also: “local newsrooms fear being left behind” is kind of a grotesque understatement of the problem of no local news. Isn't it more “humans fear democracy being dismantled?” https://www.cnn.com/...
Some news publishers will be paid for providing their content to Facebook, but others will not. And some local newsrooms, already struggling, are worried about being left behind. https://edition.cnn.com/...
BuzzFeed CEO @Peretti says “it's a good day for the internet” because Facebook is paying $$ for access to publishers' content. “For the first time, we're seeing the platforms step up and take responsibility for their role in the news ecosystem,” he says https://www.cnn.com/...
@sarafischer asks how News curators will handle stories about the company Zuck: “The team is going to be independent. For better or worse, we're a prominent part of the news cycle. I don't think it would be reasonable to have a News tab that didn't cover what Facebook was doing”
The timing is curious to me. Facebook rolled out a big new product for publishers in late 2015 (FB live) and paid them to use it. Now we're heading into 2020 and a similar story seems to be playing out.
Zuckerberg deciding to partner with News Corp for this event on the day of the launch of a major Facebook news product really says it all. they reminisced on time spent with Rupert Murdoch and Mark defended the inclusion of Breitbart as a “high quality journalism” partner
Thompson making this sound like the Holy Grail of news, because Facebook is paying a handful of news companies a sum of money that for Zuckerberg is the equivalent of me giving the guy outside the bus station a quarter for coffee https://twitter.com/...
Oy again. Breitbart will be include in the news tab. Won't be paid, says The Times, but articles Breitbart posts to FB will be eligible for inclusion. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Publishers can run their own ads on their news tab content and keep the revenue or they can use FB's ad network and still get “the vast majority of the revenue.”
Zuckerberg: “This is going to be the first time that we're forming long-term, stable relationships and partnerships with publishers.” Nailing the rug down so it can't be pulled is critical for publishers!
This is something Apple News and the Washington Post wrestle with as well, obviously. It's good that Zuck doesn't plan to prohibit Facebook coverage in FB News. But if you're curating news for FB for a living, hard to imagine you don't at least think twice.... https://twitter.com…
No better example of how a biz models shapes biz decisions than Facebook's unfortunate move to include Breitbart, which is far more advocacy than journalism, in its News Tab. The ad biz pushes companies to a “both-sides ism” that thankfully reader-supported businesses can ignore.
Honest question. Do we think Facebook paying publishers to use their context on Facebook news is going to result in less transparent coverage of Facebook? I get this is a gesture toward lost ad revenue, but ... https://www.bloomberg.com/...
A positive development on the surface, but the massive power imbalance ensures that news organizations, bargaining *individually* with Facebook, will not capture anything close to their marginal revenue product or forgone advertising revenues. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
In 2016, Steve Bannon called Breitbart a “platform for the alt-right.” In 2017, @Bernstein published a blockbuster piece on how Breitbart was smuggling white nationalism into the mainstream. Now @facebook is set to list Breitbart as a “trusted” news source https://twitter.com/...
“Facebook stole all the news we gave them in a desperate attempt to reach the young people who haven't used this platform in 10 years, and now we have no money to deliver the paper to people who have been customers for 6 decades.” — media company execs, 6 months from now. https:/…
Facebook is finally giving some publishers what they want: $$. But how many people will really visit a separate tab to get news? Story w/ @sarahfrier https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Facebook often says it shouldn't be treated like a publisher. With this deal, Facebook will be paying for news, curating news, making editorial judgments around news and ... publishing news. https://www.wsj.com/...
For the third time in my thirteen year Twitter existance, I will post a link to TechCrunch (this article is *good*): “Meet users where they are, but pull them back to where you live.” https://techcrunch.com/... on the inevitable future calamity that will be Facebook News.
“We feel acute responsibility because there's obviously an awareness that the internet has disrupted the news industry business model,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in an interview. https://www.nytimes.com/... via @mikeisaac @marctracey
This comes less than a fortnight after an Oireachtas committee heard several social media corps deny that they were publishers with editorial control https://twitter.com/...
🤗 “Facebook is expected to generate $19 billion in profits this year. Call me biased, but spending a small fraction of that to please publishers seems like a decent investment.” - @pkafka https://twitter.com/...