The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Facebook has struck a deal with News Corp. in order to feature headlines from the latter’s news outlets in its upcoming news section. News Corp. runs many well-known publications including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, and Business Insider. Facebook could launch the news section by as early as the end of the month.
News Corp. and Facebook managed to reach this deal after overcoming a few obstacles along the way. For example, the two companies had to work around difficulties presented by WSJ’s subscription business model. Despite this, the two firms have agreed a licensing fee that will be paid by Facebook in order to include news from the publications on the social media website.
Commenting on the breakthrough, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, said:
“People want to see high quality news on Facebook. I’m excited we’ll have the opportunity to include award-winning journalism from The Wall Street Journal [and other U.S. News Corp properties] in our news tab.”
Once the new section launches, users will be presented with a selection of headlines chosen by a team of editors, as for the rest of the headlines, they’ll be selected via an algorithm – something which could cause a stir later on if people perceive it to hold a liberal or conservative bias. The algorithm will apparently find content in a “suggested for you” section which suggests that it could optimise results based on what it thinks you’ll be interested in.
Source: WSJ