Facebook launched its Paper app a while ago, apparently as an attempt to enter the news business. While the app hasn’t exactly been successful, the social network is now launching a Newswire which will do breaking news.
The Newswire will be a page which will contain important news aggregated from Facebook Pages and verified by journalists. The service is being launched, thanks to a collaboration between Facebook and Storyful. Storyful is a company that has been working on content aggregation from social networks.
Storyful will be tasked with seeking out the popular news stories on Facebook, especially breaking news. These stories can be from a number of categories including politics, technology and sports. Once an algorithm finds such stories, a team of Storyful journalists will review and verify it. The verified pieces will then be pushed out on FB Newswire.
Aine Kerr, the managing editor of Storyful, says that the human element is essential to the process. According to him, “It’s going to be journalists every step of the way deciding what is of value, what should we verify, and going off and starting what is a very rigorous process at Storyful [to verify the story].”
Facebook aims to make the news feed global by offering it in a number of languages. This may sound alarm bells for Twitter which prides itself as the primary social network which users consult to find the latest in news. However, it will take Facebook a lot of muscle to compete with Twitter in the news business.
Source: FB Newswire
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