Facebook has always strived to be your main source for news, whether it's liking your favorite news sites or just tracking your friends links and posts. But what if Facebook directly hosted some of the news content you've been looking for?
It looks like the company is working with some major content providers to explore such an option, reports the New York Times.
Facebook will provide a platform for certain exclusive forms of content from news organizations and help them market the content to get it in front of more eyes. It is specifically working to get exclusive content from Buzzfeed, National Geographic, Quartz and The Guardian, among others.
However, none of the news organizations were able to reveal the specifics of the partnership with Facebook because of a non-disclosure agreement.
When a news organization decides to host its content on a platform that they have no control over, it's leaving a lot of elements out of their control. For example, what if the site crashed and lost the content? What is the profit rate?
These risks are why Facebook is trying to improve its website-loading rate as well as convince the news providers that its site is trustworthy and profitable enough to host exclusive content. To do this, Facebook has significantly improved link download speeds, as well as adjusting advertising rates and styles.
Recent patterns point to a profitable relationship.
"Facebook has not historically done any kind of revenue-sharing with content publishers. Essentially, its position has been 'Put your content on Facebook and we'll send you traffic,'" the New York Times reported. "But lately Facebook has been experimenting with revenue-sharing options. In December, it began showing N.F.L. clips sponsored by Verizon. Verizon paid for the clips to be sent to people's news feeds and ran an ad at the end of them. The N.F.L. and Facebook split the revenue."
