After a successful run in its home market, Facebook News will soon expand to overseas markets as the company looks for more ways to increase a largely stagnant customer engagement on the platform. The feature will soon make a debut in India, as well as other markets like UK, Germany, France and Brazil, with a tentative window of 6 months to one year.
Facebook took a risk when it decided to launch ‘Facebook News’ in the U.S., a dedicated place for news on its platform. The feature gave users the chance to log in to Facebook for their daily dose of news, as well as more control over the stories they see, and the ability to explore a wider range of their news interests, directly within the Facebook app. The risk though, was Facebook getting control of yet another crucial piece of the internet, News. Facebook hasn’t had the best of relationships with fake news and manipulated media and hence the launch was nothing short of a gamble.
However, seeing how the company is planning to expand to newer markets, it looks like the feature was a success in the U.S. The company said that it will pay publishers in each country for their content, especially since many countries are actually pushing for reforms that coerce tech companies like Facebook and Google to do so. For example, Australia recently proposed a new law, where these companies will have to pay media houses for any proprietary content being used.
However, while Facebook News is making an entry in India soon, it’s unlikely that it’ll look identical to its American counterpart. “Consumer habits and news inventory vary by country, so we’ll work closely with news partners in each country to tailor the experience and test ways to deliver a valuable experience for people while also honoring publishers’ business models,” Facebook said in a blog post.
