Facebook’s Campbell Brown has said that the world’s largest social media platform has come to realise the difficulties of news publishers and that Facebook is soon going to address this issue.
The publishers had gone to the Congress for an antitrust exemption to negotiate collectively against the large platforms. This specifically includes Facebook and Google Inc. Brown, the head of Facebook’s news partnerships, told that Facebook will be soon launching a subscription-based news product. Moreover, that the tests will begin in October this year.
The news subscription feature will use the Facebook’s Instant Articles as a base. It essentially aggregates the news from hundreds of Publishers. The collection of news is available to the user on his or her selection of interests and preference. In addition to all this Facebook plans to send the reader to the news publishers subscription page. Moreover, Facebook also plans to start paywall which would make the reader apply for a subscription if they have read through 10 articles.
Brwon told the media that one thing that constantly came up in the meetings with the news publishers was that they would like to see paywall up on Facebook pages as well. Facebook has taken note of this and will introduce it as soon as possible.
The News Media Alliance had the complaint about Google and Facebook that they do not properly compensate the news publishers. Therefore they threatened the global giants with a petition to congress. However, with what has come out from Facebook; this issue might see a resolution soon. Facebook has the idea to make news reading premium on its website and also introduce metered plans for the reader.
If this plan of Facebook is implemented then news publishers would have something to cheer about. Moreover, Google too cannot stay away from introducing something similar to what Facebook is doing.