Facebook is hiring journalists for ita News Tab initiative which is the social media giant dip into publishing.
The News Tab will be a section on the Facebook app that will have recent and relevant stories for readers curated by editors and not just algorithms.
https://twitter.com/noUpside/status/1163817555439443968
Facebook will hire seasoned journos(expected to be fewer than 10) from various news outlets for the editorial roles to be posted to avoid the issues that Trending Topics had which Facebook killed off. Reportedly, Facebook may pay large sums of money to some publishing partners for access to their content.
It will be interesting how this pans out as Facebook’s previous partnerships with news outlets hurt the latter.
https://twitter.com/tonyajoriley/status/1163808063096283136
wait didn't they basically do this already and then sack them all https://t.co/GUw5UPbNN8
— Alan White (@aljwhite) August 20, 2019
Journos aired their opinions regarding this recent announcement.
stop me if you've heard this one before https://t.co/8Z6Hi0nfWR pic.twitter.com/j9dxgpMAQU
— erin mccann | (@mccanner) August 20, 2019
https://twitter.com/ow/status/1163795119079919616
News Tab will exist outside of the News Feed and most of the news stories will be algorithmically sorted and ranked.
Facebook will begin testing News Tab for 200, 000 users in October and roll out to the rest of the U.S. early 2020.
What they are saying:
Facebook’s head of news partnerships, Campbell Brown: Our goal with the News tab is to provide a personalized, highly relevant experience. The majority of stories people will see will appear in the tab via algorithmic selection.
Facebook executive to Axios: “We learned a lot from Trending. This is a completely different product.”
