Facebook is planning to launch a news section for its Watch platform and is talking to a number of legacy and digital-first publishers about potential video partnerships, according to Axios. It plans to launch a daily video feature that would run for at least a year. Video content would be a minimum of three minutes in length.
In a statement to Axios, Campbell Brown, head of news partnerships at Facebook said: “Timely news video is the latest step in our strategy to make targeted investments in new types of programming on Facebook Watch… As part of our broader effort to support quality news on Facebook, we plan to meet with a wide-range of potential partners to develop, learn and innovate on news programming tailored to succeed in a social environment. Our early conversations have been encouraging, and were excited about the possibilities ahead.”
If it comes to fruition, the news feature, in partnership with a trusted publisher or publishers, would be a welcome way for Facebook to steer its users towards trusted, credible news sources, especially when a big story breaks. It can be seen a significant step in Facebook’s effort to fight back against the fake news epidemic which has plagued it and other publishers.