Facebook News is a new dedicated place for news on Facebook that gives people more control over the stories they see, and the ability to explore a wider range of their news interests, directly within the Facebook app. It also highlights the most relevant national stories of the day.
Facebook News will feature a wide range of content across four categories of publishers: general, topical, diverse and local news. Facebook surveyed over 100,000 people on Facebook in the U.S. about what topics they were most interested in and found that it was under-serving many topics people wanted most in their News Feeds, especially around categories like entertainment, health, business and sports.
In order for news publishers to be included in the Facebook News tab, they need to be in Facebook’s News Page Index, which it has developed in collaboration with the industry to identify news content. Publishers must also abide by Facebook’s Publisher Guidelines, which include a range of integrity signals in determining product eligibility, including misinformation, community standards violations, and clickbait.
During the initial test, Facebook will showcase local original reporting by surfacing local publications from the largest major metro areas across the country, beginning with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington DC, Miami, Atlanta and Boston. In the coming months, Facebook will include local news from Today In, Facebook’s new local news and community information tab, which recently expanded to over 6,000 US towns and cities.