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Top Publishers To Post News Stories Directly To Facebook Timelines

Posted by samzenpus on from the news-you-like dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC, BuzzFeed, NBC, The New York Times and National Geographic are among some of the publishers which will post news items directly to a Facebook user's timeline thanks to a new feature called Instant Articles. Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer, says the program will allow publishers to “deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models.” Under the terms of the plan, publishers can sell and embed ads in the articles and keep the revenue, or allow Facebook to sell ads. Publishers will also be allowed to track data and traffic with their own analytics tools.

13 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Good luck with that ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If publishers start posting their stuff direct to people facebook pages, I hope they're prepared for an endless stream of profanity laced responses from people who don't necessarily want that.

    Careful what you wish for, you might not like the results.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Good luck with that ... by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 4, Informative

      I glanced at the two links and didn't notice anything that says users will be forced to view them. I think it's more of a way of making the news articles display better in Facebook, which is a big problem in particular when viewing Facebook on an "iDevice". I'm sure that as with most things they will let you opt -out or hide material you're not interested in, so it will be a minor annoyance.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    2. Re:Good luck with that ... by erice · · Score: 2

      It looks like it just a means of hosting content directly on Facebook. I don't think this means that content will stuffed into the newfeeds of people who didn't ask for it or auto-posted to the walls of those who did. Both would be very bad.

    3. Re:Good luck with that ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's 'coz nobody uses Google+.

    4. Re:Good luck with that ... by sycodon · · Score: 2

      Adult men should not be on Facebook.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  2. Top Publishers To Post News Stories Directly To Fa by shubus · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is great! i know everyone will enjoy the additional tracking these news publishers will employ. And thanks for giving me another reason to celebrate finally being off Facebook.

  3. Re:Top Morons To Post Dupes Directly Into Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hey now, I agree with you about almost all those guys, but leave Fuckwhistle out of it, he's the only one keeping this site together!

  4. Another brick in the garden wall by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There'll come a day, not far from now, when the open web is regarded as something like the text usenet - a ghetto populated mainly by an ever-shrinking crowd of greybeards.

    Several local businesses in my town only have a facebook presence. Our equivalent of NPR (funded mainly by tax money) is steadily shifting its web and email contact points over to facebook pages. Even the goverment is on 'social'.

    It truly offends me that a man can't go about his life without being forced to pay for / use foreign commercial service providers. :

    1. Re:Another brick in the garden wall by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2

      There'll come a day, not far from now, when the open web is regarded as something like the text usenet - a ghetto populated mainly by an ever-shrinking crowd of greybeards.

      Several local businesses in my town only have a facebook presence. Our equivalent of NPR (funded mainly by tax money) is steadily shifting its web and email contact points over to facebook pages. Even the goverment is on 'social'.

      It truly offends me that a man can't go about his life without being forced to pay for / use foreign commercial service providers. :

      Indeed... it's the Return to AOL.

    2. Re:Another brick in the garden wall by willworkforbeer · · Score: 2

      No.

      The usage of people under 25 is on the downslope, so this will become a walled elder garden. The grey beards will be on the inside, keeping the younsters off the FB lawn.

      --
      Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
    3. Re:Another brick in the garden wall by willworkforbeer · · Score: 2

      You missed my point, possibly because I did not elaborate, so that's on me. Here's my logic.

      The current FB demographics for the high use crowd -- the engagement curve that shows the people who spend the time on the site -- shows that under 25's aren't FB active like the over-25 crowd. This may make sense anecdotally; ask a teen or college student and they'll tell you they only us FB when required by the situation (logins, access to contact one of those FB-only businesses mentioned in the OP, etc). They do not spend actual free time looking at FB as a social platform of preference.

      Therefore, as the current FB crowd ages over the coming decade, the idea put forth in the OP comment about the state of the Internet outside FB being akin to a ghetto is not true. 10 years from now the current 24-and-unders will be 34-and-unders. They will be active and vital, economically powerful, and importantly, still not on FB.

      FB will continue to average up on their demographics until it is the walled garden of the older crowd, supplying news and feeds to that greying group -- while the drivers of trends, the under 35's at that point, will still be the non-FB crowd.

      All this assumes FB can't find a way to become relevant to the younger generations, it is possible but difficult. But they can grow ever more massive on the money and spending power of the 35 to 100 year olds though, who by then are too entrenched to switch out of the FB ecosystem.

      Which creates a new topic -- the development of next generation AI for the purpose of automated migration of all those middle aged people's digital lives from FB to the replacement social network -- VRBook or whatever.

      Or maybe that is why FB is in the VR space, to create a VR-powered FB2.0 for the youngest members of society to have their own too-cool-for-grownups social network like FB was originally. It would give them a place away from parents ( a current reason given for the falling away of the kids from FB) and it would stay youth-only since grandma is not going to put on an Oculus rig to interact with great grandson or to post her latest recipe on his VR 'wall' and "like' his new VR pet (a Raptordoodle hydbrid dino dog).

      --
      Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
  5. A lot of misguided outrage here by edtice1559 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Right now if you follow a new source on FB you get a little summary in your news feed. Then you click to the publisher's web site to read the story. In the new system, the content will be served up by Facebook without you actually visiting the third-party web site. From a user standpoint there may not be a big difference here. The /. crowd worries abut things like FB taking over the world. There's probably a legitimate concern with that. From a UI standpoint, an update by the New York Times isn't any different than an update from my nephew. From a security standpoint, it seems good that entire pages are served from the same domain and that the links point back to that same server. Less concern about a link to NewYorkT1mes leading me to trouble. You can still go to the publisher sites directly to read their stories but if you like using FB as a news aggregator this is an improvement. It's not a very *good* news aggregator but sounds like this is an attempt to change that. I'd love something that serves up news that I *care* about or, more specifically, news in proportion to how much I care about it. I might read one paragraph on what's happening in Yemen (seems to be an intractable problem where tactical updates don't really change the fundamentals) a sentence on DeflateGate but an entire long-format story on how school lunches affect education.

  6. Posts to Newsfeed by TranquilVoid · · Score: 2

    Samzenpus' shit-stirring title: "Top Publishers To Post News Stories Directly To Facebook Timelines"

    First line of the article: "... which posts news items directly to a user’s newsfeed."

    The use of "timeline" suggests these articles will be auto-posted to people's walls, which is not the case and would seriously annoy most people. Currently there is a side box of trending articles - this change, while still mildly annoying, will simply put the articles in your news stream where it is less easy to ignore.