Facebook announced that it plans to roll out Facebook News, currently a US-only feature that launched in June, to other countries faster than planned.
In a blog post Campbell Brown, VP, Global News Partnerships, said that the company hopes to bring the News tab, to the UK, Germany, France, India, and Brazil “within the next six months.”
Brown added that “In each country, we’ll pay news publishers to ensure their content is available in the new product.”
Facebook claims that in the US, it found that more than 95% of the traffic Facebook News gives publishers “is incremental to the traffic they already get from News Feed.”
The naming is confusing – News Feed is the classic feed of everything and everyone you follow on Facebook. Facebook News is a separate tab that collates news from trusted sources such as newspapers via direct agreements with publishers.
Facebook is hoping that this can strengthen the platform’s trustworthiness as a source to consume news after so much fake news and extreme political content was shared over it in the lead up to the 2016 Presidential election. With the 2020 election in November, we’ll see if things have improved.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.