Facebook Considering Publishing & Hosting Outside Content
According to a recent New York Times article, Facebook wants to promote itself out of the middle man position and instead host and publish third party content for its users. Yes, This means that articles, videos and all outside content would shift to being published on Facebook and those pesky links pointing out of Facebook would go away.
There are two reasons why this is a feasible venture...
- Audience - The first is that Facebook has the audience (1.3 billion users and growing).
- Mobile & Multi-platform Ready - The second is Facebook is capable of make a fast, user-friendly platform that works on all devices. Case in point -- most publishers have clunky, slow websites... especially on mobile devices.
Here are some very valid points that were included in the New York Times article:
"The company has been on something of a listening tour with publishers, discussing better ways to collaborate. The social network has been eager to help publishers do a better job of servicing readers in the News Feed, including improving their approach to mobile in a variety of ways. One possibility it mentioned was for publishers to simply send pages to Facebook that would live inside the social network's mobile app and be hosted by its servers; that way, they would load quickly with ads that Facebook sells. The revenue would be shared.
That kind of wholesale transfer of content sends a cold, dark chill down the collective spine of publishers, both traditional and digital insurgents alike. If Facebook's mobile app hosted publishers' pages, the relationship with customers, most of the data about what they did and the reading experience would all belong to the platform. Media companies would essentially be serfs in a kingdom that Facebook owns."
We will keep you posted on what Facebook and publishers do next.
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