Facebook News didn’t last long! This service, launched last year, will close its doors in early December in France and several other European countries.
It’s a tab that Facebook users may not be familiar with, and that they will not have had time to really appreciate. Facebook News, or News, was launched in February 2022 in several European countries, including France. It brings together press articles from around a hundred media outlets, including titles from the national and regional daily press, as well as magazines and even TV channels.
One year and then gone
The social network will not have given this novelty much time to find its place with users: Meta has indeed announced that the News service will no longer be available from the beginning of December.. The group specifies that it will continue to honor its commitments to French, German and British publishers until the fateful date.
“ We know people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content. They come to connect with other people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests. “, explains the company. ” News accounts for less than 3% of what people see in their Facebook News Feed across the world, so news discovery is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people “.
This pivot towards current events therefore did not give the results hoped for by Facebook, which now wants to focus on videos to better counter TikTok. And in a few months, who knows if the new trend of the moment will not force the company to another change of foot!
The delicate question of neighboring rights
The disappearance of this tab does not change the possibility of sharing news links and press articles in the countries concerned, as Facebook wishes to point out. This is not the case in Canada, where a new law requires the social network to pay the media when links from their publications are shared on Facebook. To avoid having to pay, the company simply decided to block these linksto the chagrin of the press titles concerned, which are losing significant exposure here.
On the other hand, this move has not changed anything in terms of engagement: in Canada, Facebook records the same number of active users on a daily basis, according to a Similarweb study relayed by Reuters. The question of neighboring rights – this copyright mechanism aimed at better sharing the benefits of platforms that relay news – is also agitating Europe and France. This study is a reminder that the media may need Facebook more than the other way around…
Read 3 info to understand the end of articles on Google and Facebook
Source :
Meta
