I’ve wanted to support journalism directly in our apps for a long time. But we’ve faced a dilemma trying to do more in the main News Feed because most of our community consistently tells us that they want to see more updates from their friends, family and communities, and less other content. For most people, social networks are still primarily about being social.
But over the past couple of years, we’ve started successfully building tabs outside of the main News Feed, like Marketplace for buying and selling items, and Watch for videos. Even if only 10 percent to 20 percent of our community in the United States uses one of these tabs, that’s around 15 million to 30 million people. We’ve been working with publishers on building an experience like this for news, and on Friday we launched the result of that work: Facebook News.
For the first time, there will be a place in the Facebook app dedicated solely to high-quality news. Because people are still better at picking out the most important and highest-quality stories, the top stories in Facebook News will be curated by a team of diverse and seasoned journalists. Below that, there will be a wider selection of stories that are personalized algorithmically. Each story will have clear branding and provenance from the news outlets that published them. Publishers have told us over the years that this is particularly important.
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