Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as part of an interview from April, made note of the platform’s potential plans to develop a separate News tab within Facebook with the intention of focusing on collecting stories from high-quality, trusted sources.
However, since that interview, Facebook has been relatively silent as far as rollout is concerned for this feature. But this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was offering news outlets large sums of money in exchange for the rights to share their content on a dedicated News tab–planned to be implemented by the end of the year.
This plan is the first real venture back into the world of News since Facebook’s “Trending News” Section failure from 2016. That section used to hold a spot in the top right corner of the News Feed, however, after being shrouded in controversy over human moderators and eventually its role in propagating “fake news,” Facebook opted to remove the section entirely.
Source: Social Media Today
This is especially important in considering the role that Facebook plays in news sharing already. Facebook recognized that 43% of Americans were getting some form of news content on the platform, and ultimately decided it was time to reintroduce News Sharing in an authentic and controlled way.
Are you looking forward to the News feature coming to Facebook? Let us know below!