For quite a long time now Facebook has been a source of news. The fact that the social media platform made it so easy to disseminate information created the inevitability that said platform would be used as a source of news by a lot of different people all in all.
Since news was a big part of what brought people to Facebook, it was also inevitable that the social media giant would start to monetize the presence of news on its main site as well as its various mobile applications which are also a pretty popular way of scrolling through Facebook all in all.
The initial monetization strategy was sharing ad revenue, but this lead to a downward spiral in terms of the quality of content available on Facebook, with a lot of click bait earning money whereas quality journalism was not given the same level of attention even though it was a far superior way to get the news.
While this clickbait based news proliferation was quite profitable for Facebook, recently the company has come under fire for not doing enough to make sure that its users are able to gain access to quality news sources that would give the complete picture rather than using sensationalist headlines in order to trick users into clicking on the links and thereby earning money in the process.
Hence, as a result of this fact, Facebook is trying to make deals with major news organizations such as the WSJ, Bloomberg and Washington Post. This deal basically involves Facebook licensing the content that these news organizations are providing and paying them around three million dollars a year for this licensing agreement.
This deal would be very favorable to Facebook because of the fact that three million is not that much when you compare it to the benefits that it will provide the social media platform. No major news outlet has agreed to the deal so far, so we will have to wait and see whether or not Facebook can actually make things work.
Photo: AP Photo/Francois Mori
Read next: Facebook's New Chatbot has Already Started Providing Concerning Responses!
Since news was a big part of what brought people to Facebook, it was also inevitable that the social media giant would start to monetize the presence of news on its main site as well as its various mobile applications which are also a pretty popular way of scrolling through Facebook all in all.
The initial monetization strategy was sharing ad revenue, but this lead to a downward spiral in terms of the quality of content available on Facebook, with a lot of click bait earning money whereas quality journalism was not given the same level of attention even though it was a far superior way to get the news.
While this clickbait based news proliferation was quite profitable for Facebook, recently the company has come under fire for not doing enough to make sure that its users are able to gain access to quality news sources that would give the complete picture rather than using sensationalist headlines in order to trick users into clicking on the links and thereby earning money in the process.
Hence, as a result of this fact, Facebook is trying to make deals with major news organizations such as the WSJ, Bloomberg and Washington Post. This deal basically involves Facebook licensing the content that these news organizations are providing and paying them around three million dollars a year for this licensing agreement.
This deal would be very favorable to Facebook because of the fact that three million is not that much when you compare it to the benefits that it will provide the social media platform. No major news outlet has agreed to the deal so far, so we will have to wait and see whether or not Facebook can actually make things work.
Photo: AP Photo/Francois Mori
Read next: Facebook's New Chatbot has Already Started Providing Concerning Responses!
