By Adedapo Adesanya
Popular social media giant, Facebook, will start showing news contents from numerous German publishers and media outlets on a dedicated part of its site from May.
In an online news conference, Mr Jesper Doub, the Director for News Partnerships in Europe said, “We’re going to invest about a billion dollars in Facebook News worldwide over the next three years.”
“Facebook News in Germany is part of that,” he added.
Although he didn’t specify how much individual publishers will be paid, he noted that it was important for publishers to partner with Facebook so that they can be remunerated for content linked to on the site.
He, however, clarified that the content does not have to be produced especially for Facebook.
“What’s important here is that content itself doesn’t end up on Facebook, but we put links to the publishers’ offerings,” Mr Doub stressed.
According to Facebook, partners so far include Germany’s Spiegel news magazine, the Funke Media Group and Hamburg-based publishing house Gruner + Jahr, which belongs to the Bertelsmann Group.
Mr Doub described Facebook News as “a long-term collaboration”, adding that, “We believe it will take several years before the product is really good.”
Facebook News was launched in the United States in 2020 and was recently introduced in the United Kingdom.
In Australia, Facebook agreed last week to support publishers of its choice after a tough battle with the government there about paying for content.
The row had briefly prompted Facebook to ban news content from its platform.
