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Facebook Businesses News

Top Publishers To Post News Stories Directly To Facebook Timelines 50

Posted by samzenpus 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.
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Top Publishers To Post News Stories Directly To Facebook Timelines More

Top Publishers To Post News Stories Directly To Facebook Timelines

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  • Good luck with that ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @02:35PM (#49684523) Homepage

    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.

    • Re:Good luck with that ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @03:03PM (#49684735) Journal
      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.
    • Google Plus already does it. Doesn't seem to be much profanity.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by erice ( 13380 )

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Adult men should not be on Facebook.

  • In other words, (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Faced with plummeting usage, Facebook turns to Established Old School Media.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    • I'm not sure when this 'plummeting usage' happened or even if it exists, but news events do lead to a good deal more chatter. FB users basically told Zuckerberg they want this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Facebook is on a fast track to AOL land. I happens to every company who thinks they can be everything to everybody.

  • Humm uh oh, will this start a Digg v4 phenomena on Facebook ?

  • Top Publishers To Post News Stories Directly To Fa (Score:5, Funny)

    by shubus ( 1382007 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @02:44PM (#49684615)
    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.

  • Facebook, the modern day Compuserve? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    All the services running through that one interface? Maybe a spurious comparison ...

  • What the hell is a "fast, interactive article"? What do you want to bet there won't be a block or close button on them either.

  • Remember, when you are using Facebook, you are nothing but 'inventory' for advertisers.
  • "Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer ...."

    There's also a Chris W. Cox, chief lobbyist for the United States National Rifle Association. Nothing but a meaningless coincidence, of course.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by neminem ( 561346 )

      The coincidence presumably being that they're a bunch of Cox?

    • "Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer ...."

      There's also a Chris W. Cox, chief lobbyist for the United States National Rifle Association. Nothing but a meaningless coincidence, of course.

      There are Cox Apples too.

  • Another brick in the garden wall (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @03:19PM (#49684871)

    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. :

    • 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 [slashdot.org].

    • 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.

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

      Hey, I'm American and it disgusts me as much as you.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 )

        I'm American and it disgusts me as much as you.

        Oh, now, don't be so hard on yourself. You couldn't help where you were born.

  • This will give facebook alot of control over which articles people see. I hope that people don't base their opinions only what they read on facebook. I hope people continue to look outside facebook for news. If not then zuckerberg could become too powerful. What happens if a news company reports negatively about facebook? Do they get dropped?

  • A lot of misguided outrage here (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @04:24PM (#49685309)
    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.

  • Posts to Newsfeed (Score:3)

    by TranquilVoid ( 2444228 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @07:59PM (#49686459)

    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.

  • reason 1,590... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...that I am not on Facebook.

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