Facebook News to launch in UK next month with several big publishers onboard

Facebook News will appear as a dedicated tab with curated content from partner publishers.

Facebook to pay UK publishers millions to license news stories (REUTERS)

Facebook on Monday said it will launch its news service in the UK in January next year. The social networking company also announced partnerships with several big publishers such as The Economist, Guardian Media Group, Conde Nast, and others for the content aggregation.

Facebook will reportedly pay “millions of pounds” a year to license content from the partner publishers. Facebook News will appear as a dedicated news tab with Facebook employees selecting stories from different mainstream outlets.

According to The Guardian, Facebook's new programme will help cash-strapped publishers, though there is no word on the amount of money allocated for this purpose.

“It's an extremely large investment and it's something we've done over multiple years,” Sarah Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships in northern Europe is quoted as saying.

Brown also promised that curation would be based on certain metrics with am emphasis on original reporting. “Is it deeply sourced reporting, is it timely, is it offering an interesting angle, is it well-sourced?” she added.

The report further says that the news tab will show a wide range of stories shortlisted by the news aggregator service Upday. Facebook will also use algorithms to show a few stories in the section.

While it is given that partnered content will have a priority, publishers who have not signed up for the programme may still appear in the news section if they adhere to certain standards.

The announcement comes at a time when publishers have raised concerns over the ability of companies such as Facebook and Google to control their content reach. Things, however, are changing of late. For instance, Google last month said it planned to pay $1 billion to publishers globally through a new product called Google News Showcase.

For internet companies, a partnership with legacy and credible news sources will help weed out misinformation on their platforms. Just recently, The New York Times reported that Facebook was forced to change its algorithms to push posts from established and mainstream news in the days following the US presidential election in a bid to tackle the spread of fake news and misinformation.