Facebook Looking To Host News Stories With Instant Articles

Facebook, the company, doesn't like it when you leave Facebook, the social network, to view other content on the internet. Which is exactly what you do when you click a link to a news article that someone has shared in a post. Facebook would much rather you stay on their site for as long as possible. A new report from The Wall Street Journal details an upcoming attempt by Facebook to keep you put called Instant Articles. The feature would allow users to read full articles in their feed from sources like Buzzfeed, New York Times, and National Geographic.

This isn't the first time Facebook's plans of presenting users with full articles instead of links has been discussed, and WSJ says Instant Articles has been in development for some time. While the social site wants to keep users' eyeballs by hosting news articles, what would be the benefit for publications?

The answer seems to be letting those third-party sites keep revenue from the ads placed in their content. Sources told the WSJ that the deals being negotiated involve publishers keeping all of the revenue from ads they sell themselves, while Facebook will keep 30% of revenue from ads they sell.

Instant Articles is said to possibly launch as early as later this month, although an official rollout has yet to be confirmed. There are still a number of concerns for publishers, however, such as how much control they will have over the content that is hosted by Facebook. Further, some publishers are already reliant on Facebook and the large percentage of web traffic they receive from the network, and they have concerns about further tying themselves to the site.

SOURCE Wall Street Journal