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Facebook Wants to Skip the Off-Site Links, Host News Content Directly 51

Posted by timothy from the a-few-seconds-a-few-seconds-there dept.
The Wall Street Journal, in a report also cited by The Next Web and others, reports that Facebook is to soon begin acting not just as a conduit for news links pasted onto users' timelines (and leading to articles hosted elsewhere) but also as a host for the articles themselves. From the WSJ article: To woo publishers, Facebook is offering to change its traditional revenue-sharing model. In one of the models under consideration, publishers would keep all of the revenue from ads they sell on Facebook-hosted news sites, the people familiar with the matter said. If Facebook sells the advertisement, it would keep roughly 30% of the revenue, as it does in many other cases. Another motivation for Facebook to give up some revenue: It hopes the faster-loading content will encourage users to spend more time on its network. It is unclear what format the ads might take, or if publishers will be able to place or measure the ads they sell within Facebook. It seems likely Facebook would want publishers to use its own advertising-technology products, such as Atlas and LiveRail, as opposed to those offered by rivals such as Google Inc.
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Facebook Wants to Skip the Off-Site Links, Host News Content Directly More

Facebook Wants to Skip the Off-Site Links, Host News Content Directly

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  • H-1B News? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, 2015 @06:31PM (#49607907)

    Can we trust them with clear/unbiased coverage of news related to things like offshoring and H-1B quotas? Not that the mainstream media gets it right, but at least then we can find a diversity of coverage.

    • If they're hosting the ads themselves, at least it will take care of 3rd-party malware. Maybe. Fingers crossed, good luck with that, YMMV, invalid in Hawaii, Alaska, and Delaware, etc.

    • AOL (Score:3)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Odds are not many working there have ever heard of AOL or an AOL CD at the checkout stand.

      The irony is they are steadily working their way to being another AOL.

    • No one's forcing you to get your news from FB. Yu can always, you know, visit other sites.

  • Websites already hosted in Facebook's mobile (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bringer128 ( 2261266 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @06:51PM (#49607985)

    Websites are already hosted in Facebook's mobile browser. They've done this to speed up the performance on phones, as swapping apps takes time. They also get to then track which links you click on further, which is great for their targeted advertising.

    This is the next logical step: move towards hosting the entire internet inside Facebook.

    • This is the next logical step: move towards hosting the entire internet inside Facebook.

      The Matrix has nothing on Facebook.

    • via the app's settings, you can launch them externally

    • Funny I find performance is faster when using firefox or any other browser that supports adblock plugins. At least they still provide the option to disable that "feature".

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Websites are already hosted in Facebook's mobile browser. They've done this to speed up the performance on phones, as swapping apps takes time.

      Dude, what are you smoking? They do not. What they do is implement a WebKit browser inside their app. That mini web browser makes connections to the real, original websites. Facebook does not mirror the content. Where are you getting this nonsense from?

      • I think you got caught on my use of the word "hosted". They do not host the content, but they do own the browser you view the content with and as such this increases their ability to track your viewing patterns.

    • Sooner or later it will come up against systemd. There will be a war.

      • Sooner or later it will come up against systemd. There will be a war.

        ...or they will merge, and then Skynet.

  • out of old VW beetles and surplus train track. But why would you?

  • Yeah, let's give Facebook more power... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by guevera ( 2796207 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @07:06PM (#49608043)
    Facebook is already make or break for news sites. Operations I've worked with get anywhere from 40-60+ percent of their traffic from Facebook. Facebook already has too much market power in this sector. News operations that go along with this idea are slitting their own throats.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think they secretly watched news struggle with all their shitty web business plans and designs until readership declined so much and Google made news such a commodity...Scoop them up and make their users even more hooked. Facebook IS desperate for new users. They bought whatsapp users at like $36 per user? When are they ever gonna recoup that from the Whatsapp service alone?

  • Sorry to be harsh but it's true. Facebook disallows uploading of PDFs or document filetypes or animated GIFs for any sort of collaboration or group communication. There is absolutely no technological excuse for that. Twitter's limit needs to be upped to about 300 characters to say anything useful. 100% of their users agree. Unfortunately the higher ups can't seem to pull their heads out of their asses. Both FB and Twitter constantly try to stop users from linking to offsite content. How about allow i

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      100% of their users agree.

      I don't agree. If you need to post something that's longer than the 140 character limit, then Twitter is just the wrong tool for the job. Pick something else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bl968 ( 190792 )

      I would be happy if twitter simply did not count links and hashtags against the submission text character limit.

  • Facebook is the new AOL (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gary Perkins ( 1518751 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @07:19PM (#49608099) Journal
    I wonder at what point they will move too far from their core mission and lose traction to some better service... and what will that new service look like?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bouldin ( 828821 )

      This is a pretty good analogy, because Facebook is a walled garden, like AOL was in its heyday.

      Cross-domain e-mail and multi-domain web pages killed AOL's model.

      We are just a few protocols away from having a federated social network. The biggest gap is a way to look people up on the broader Internet and negotiate a "trust" connection.

      I'm sure facebook would fight very hard against this kind of interoperability. It would not kill fb, but would reduce it from The Social Network to just a major hub on the la

      • This is a pretty good analogy, because Facebook is a walled garden, like AOL was in its heyday.

        Compuserve was another, and MSN I believe. That was the business model back then. I started with Compuserve, but, with many others, broke out after a while and Compuserve folded. Seems we are going full circle.

    • I think Microsoft is a better analogy.

      Like Microsoft, Facebook is monopolistic to the point that every major business decision is made with the goal of expanding and cementing exclusive control. And like Microsoft, Facebook rarely 'sells' these decisions to its users. Rarely, it seems is the question of "Why would users want this?" placed at a higher priority than "How can we achieve absolute control?"

      An interesting manifestation of their "power over popularity" focus is that both Microsoft (historically)

    • If Facebook keeps driving people away, maybe one day G+ will be more than an also-ran.

      Facebook was making me hate people I thought I knew. G+ makes me hate people I don't know, yes, but it also makes me like people I don't know, so that's still infinitely superior to facebook.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kyont ( 145761 )

        An honest question - what is different about G+'s interface or paradigm (compared to Facebook) that gets people to post content that makes you like them more? I'm intrigued, but my first thought is that people can be asshats on both platforms, overposting about their bowel problems or their political views (sometimes difficult to distinguish which is which). If there's something fundamentally different about G+, what am I missing? (Or is it just that the cool people have migrated already...)

        • An honest question - what is different about G+'s interface or paradigm (compared to Facebook) that gets people to post content that makes you like them more?

          I'm not really sure. Somehow G+ seems more oriented towards seeing stuff from disparate sources. I just find more stuff to reshare.

  • My only question is if these new pages will have links to the super helpful articles on "New Law Passed In Your Area That People are Upset About" and "10 Celebrities Who Are Said To Smell Awful". I don't know how my life can be complete without thous ;-)

  • Given the high censorship of existing posts... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bomarc ( 306716 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @07:29PM (#49608151) Homepage
    Given that they (Facebook) currently censor many posts, given that they continually force us to view "most popular" (by their arbitrary ranking) ... why should we trust their "news" ?
    I wish those that use it ... would find another medium.

    • Given that they (Facebook) currently censor many posts, given that they continually force us to view "most popular" (by their arbitrary ranking) ... why should we trust their "news" ?

      I wish those that use it ... would find another medium.

      Sounds like you should follow your own advice based on the "we."

    • I wish those that use it ... would find another medium.

      It seems like any media format with a wide enough viewing audience falls under pressure to implement content filtering; that Facebook happened to do it early on is unremarkable. Tumblr tried to do it sometime in the last year or two and was subjected to a fair whack of backlash, but they'll try it again sometime soon. The "Family Friendly" label is quite valuable, it would seem.

  • It's all about the spamvertising (Score:4, Insightful)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @07:33PM (#49608173) Homepage Journal

    Cue the Monty Python skits, 'cause it's all about the spam spam spam spam spam.

    Not the content. Not keeping articles current. Not making sure you can share links *outside* Facebook if you so choose.

    But spam. Unending, unyielding, inflexible barrages of "advertising".

    If they sent out leaflets instead of banner ads, my house would be ceiling deep in the shit, even with AdBlock Plus running.

  • I think it's relevant enough: http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state... [theoatmeal.com] ... and if I can't google or otherwise circumvent my way to the content, I'm perfectly fine to go without it.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 04, 2015 @04:45AM (#49609947)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Facebook seems to want to be the Internet for everyone, much like AOL. We can but hope that it becomes irrelevant at least an order of magnitude faster than AOL itself has. You can all accelerate this process by ceasing your usage of Facebook immediately.
  • Facebook I mean

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