Follow Twitter, Facebook Develops Bulletin Tools For Writers And Journalists

Facebook (Photo by Tim Bennett on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - In 2019, Facebook introduced the Journalism Project. Through this open program, Facebook collaborates with news agencies from around the world to produce information that is more trusted and needed by the public.

Every year, the company continues to develop this program. And recently, The New York Times (NYT) found that Facebook is developing tools aimed at both indie writers and journalists in general.

Although still in the development stage, an insider who contacted The New York Times revealed that this Facebook tool may function similarly to a newsletter service. At first glance, the explanation is similar to the Revue service that Twitter recently acquired.

This means that there will be features that writers can use to sort emails, set up paid subscriptions, thereby helping me gain subscribers and followers via Facebook.

New Forms of Journalism

The concept of newsletters on social media is not something new. In recent years, news bulletins have become a new and growing industry. It's just that, since the COVID-19 pandemic, this industry has seen an explosion of users.

The reason is, newsletters can be a new way to encourage the development and income of writers. Substack, which was launched in 2017, is one of the big players in the industry.

Launching Endgadget, Substack has more than 250,000 paid subscriptions from various platforms. In addition, the company has also worked with 10 major media offices to generate annual revenues of up to 7 million United States (US) dollars as of September 2020.

Given the size of these revenue figures, it's no surprise that Facebook wants to get involved in this new industry. However, unlike Twitter, which prefers to acquire the Revue platform, Facebook is still trying to develop its own creation tools.

According to the NYT report, Mark Zuckerberg is aware of the development trend of journalism in which journalists move as individuals and monetize their writing through newsletters. Therefore, Mark also asked the development team to make the project a priority.

There is no further information regarding when this tool will be launched. However, Facebook executives hope the tool can be launched this summer.

Facebook's Vice President for Global News Partnerships, Campbell Brown, stated that it wants to support independent journalists and experts in creating online businesses and readers.

"We are developing the best way to help them benefit from the news products we make, such as Facebook News and subscriptions, while building new tools to complement everything journalists need," Campbell told The New York Times.