San Francisco — Gear-up for more news content on social networking than ever before. So far, Facebook has been successfully pushing the Like button and its multitude of other features to media companies in recent years. But now the social media giant Facebook is reportedly working with publishers on a special project to create “Facebook Editions” of their products to deliver news to social networkers, according to a Forbes report.
For years, news organizations have been using Twitter more than Facebook to get their messages out and publicize breaking news. As the trend changes, and competitions looming large, Facebook is looking for new ways to hold on to its now 750 million users and avoid becoming the next social networking ghetto.
So, it makes sense that Facebook would be interested in formulating customized news applications and improving relationships with major news outlets that can be read while on Facebook. And according to a new report, users could soon be catching up on your news reading from within the social network as well.
According to reports by Forbes, Facebook is busy working with a number of publishing companies including The Washington Post, CNN, and News Corp.’s The Daily to cook up something called “Facebook Editions,” which would launch later this year. Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici described them as something akin to “app versions” of the news outlets that live inside the popular social network’s walls.
The report citing an anonymous source, Bercovici noted that not all media outlets are keen on that idea though. However, The New York Times has been hesitant to sign on because it could pose conflicts with its new subscription-based online model.
A Facebook representative, not surprisingly, responded to questions we had about the new project with a vague response.
“We have nothing new to announce,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote via e-mail. “The top media sites around the world are associate with Facebook and we are constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations.”
Interestingly, a larger number of publishing house already utilize Facebook Pages to dispense links to stories to the news feed, and offer their own method of consolidation with Facebook on their sites. They can build apps for Pages to provide a more customized interface for their content on their own. The Washington Post currently displays an app allowing users to browse political headlines from their Facebook Page, and The New Yorker has used a Like-gated, fans-only app to force users to subscribe to their Page’s update if they want to read certain articles.
Additionally, Facebook’s like button is already ubiquitous among online news sites, and these same sites have their own Facebook pages for fans but the Editions app would probably allow news purveyors the ability to customize Facebook interface, crafting a better mini-Facebook world for readers. The
This help may lower the cost of building the apps enough that publications see a clearer road to return on investment. In this case, though, Facebook may be contributing design and backend expertise to facilitate the development process. Forbes writer believes that the social media networking site will probably ask for a piece of revenues and ad sales generated by these special apps.
No financial details have been revealed yet, but it’s likely Facebook and the news outlets are trying to come up with a revenue sharing agreement. Besides, Facebook itself has recently been zealously been campaigning to increase its presence in the media ecosystem, which we assume this latest effort is a part of. For news organizations, that means links to stories might get a little more traction, especially if users have a way to read and share them with other users right from Facebook.