Friends with benefits? - News companies and Facebook
May 16th 2015
“INSTANT ARTICLES” is a new service announced by Facebook on May 12th, in partnership with nine news firms, including the New York Times, the Guardian and National Geographic.
Facebook users will be able to read stories from these publishers
without leaving the social network, since it will host the articles
rather than just providing weblinks that send readers off to the news
firms’ websites. In return, newspapers will be able to sell advertising
that appears next to their stories and keep all the revenue, or let
Facebook sell the ad space, and give it a 30% cut.
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The nascent partnership highlights Facebook’s growing clout in the news
business. Newspapers have become dependent on it to send readers to
them, and tweaks to Facebook’s algorithm can dramatically change
websites’ traffic. The New York Times gets around 15% of its traffic from Facebook; some news sites get over half.
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The friendship is not without its complications. With 1.4 billion users,
Facebook has grown into a Goliath, controlling around 9% of all online
advertising globally. Newspapers risk giving Facebook even more power by
conditioning young Facebook users to think that they can get everything
they need in one stop, and undermining their own websites as
destinations.
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