Report: Facebook to Test Subscription News Service

[engine]

The report suggests Facebook is to test a subscription news service whereby users get ten articles and then subsequent news goes behind a paywall.

I can see the appeal from Facebook's point of view as it's additional revenue. Really, i'm not sure how this might work on Facebook. Will people not just go straight to the publications.

Facebook plans to begin testing the metered approach later this year, built on top of its Instant Articles feature, a source familiar with the proposal told CNET.

[cnet.com...]

[keyplyr]

News, as much as it's affronted, seems to be a new focus.

[mcneely]

Facebook looks at a 3 word post from one of your buddies as "news" --

But I digress - Facebook news is just links, that some human somewhere, thinks is important to fit the agenda of "togetherness" on the platform .. At the end of the day it ends up being pretty skewed and one sided.
I can see where Facebook's echo chamber of agenda might appeal to those who might enjoy Facebook's preaching to the choir and I'm pretty sure that there will be plenty who will blindly subscribe to the service.

Facebook might fancy itself to be a latest news aggregation site when it is only still just a social networking platform, much like how Google fancies itself to be a search engine when it is still only just an ad server.

See how that works?

As an aside -- article headlines behind paywalls are pretty easy to find elsewhere for free -

[Writerly]

It seems to be an Instant Articles upgrade. Even though it started out as a great publishing platform that allows customers to publish their stories swiftly, I tend to think that the Instant Articles were created with the purpose of additional income. It can be a fair thing if the people who create and design their own articles can get income, too.