Facebook Plans For News Inside Its Platform

Recent reports have revealed that Facebook Inc FB is in talks with several news organizations to host their content within its platform instead of users having to click on links to read the news. Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine, Dan Costa, was on CNBC Tuesday to reveal more about this upcoming service. Good For Facebook And Users "So, basically what Facebook wants to do is get publishers," Costa said. "Right now publishers post links on Facebook in the hopes of getting people to come back to their website to read that story. Facebook is saying, ‘that takes too long especially in a mobile environment, why don't you just host your entire story on Facebook itself, in that way more people will read your story'." "So, it's actually pretty [improves the reader's] experience, it's definitely good for Facebook. For publishers I think the case is a little bit more complicated." Publishers' Angle Costa was asked how this deal might impact publishers. He replied, "The important thing to remember is that Facebook is an incredibly important traffic source for publishers. Behind Google search, Facebook is probably the number two referrer for most publishers. So, it's hugely important to our businesses. So, you have to do business with them, you have to work with them in some way." He continued, "That said, when you look at the way this deal is structured, we don't know exactly how Facebook is going to do it, whether they are going to allow you to share revenue, whether they are going to allow publishers perhaps post an advertisement on these Facebook stories." "But it seems like they are going to be giving a lot more monetization options in terms of advertising dollars and also in terms of the data that publishers can collect on their readers," Costa concluded.