Update on March 1, 2021 at 4:00AM PT:
After expanding to the UK in January 2021, Facebook News will launch in Germany in May 2021. Today we announced early partnerships with publishers that represent more than 100 editorial brands in Germany. For more information, check out the Facebook Journalism Project post.
Originally published on August 25, 2020 at 6:30AM PT:
The US launch of Facebook News marked a new chapter in our relationship with the news industry and it’s off to a strong start. Built with publisher feedback and insights from people, it is a personalized destination for news within Facebook. Helping publishers reach new audiences has been one of our most important goals, and we’ve found over 95% of the traffic Facebook News delivers to publishers is incremental to the traffic they already get from News Feed.
Based on this progress, we are accelerating our plans to expand internationally. We aim to launch Facebook News in multiple countries within the next six months to a year and are considering the UK, Germany, France, India and Brazil. In each country, we’ll pay news publishers to ensure their content is available in the new product.
Consumer habits and news inventory vary by country, so we’ll work closely with news partners in each country to tailor the experience and test ways to deliver a valuable experience for people while also honoring publishers’ business models.
We will continue to focus on growing engagement of Facebook News in the US and we’re committed to the partnerships we’ve developed with US publishers to make Facebook News a valuable asset over the long term.
Innovation is critical to building a sustainable news ecosystem. We will keep building new products and making global investments to help the news industry build long-lasting business models.