Washington:
Facebook has been reportedly planning to find an option to let its users read popular news sites without leaving it.
The social media site has been in talks with various publications including Buzzfeed, National Geographic, and The New York Times, to post their content directly, which would mean the stories won’t appear as links in the News Feed but their content could be shared or liked without leaving Facebook, The Verge reported.
In a report by The New York Times, it has been said that the new initiative might include revenue-sharing schemes and the usual ads placed on the publisher’s stories could be removed and a single ad in a custom format may be used for each article.
Facebook feels that it could increase more traffic as well as ad revenue by hosting content directly on the site which would take less loading time, leading to an increase in traffic.
Meanwhile, many people in the media industry worry that this would give too much power to the social network.
However, John Hermann, editor at The Awl, felt that publishers were just the “middlemen” in Facebook’s opinion.
Facebook, that had stopped viewing itself just as an online destination long ago, has been the only route to internet for some users, in developing countries.
