The Facebook Journalism Project has introduced several initiatives to help media companies and publishers develop new ways of generating substantial revenue. Now, the social networking giant aims to cater to independent experts, journalists and writers. The announcement came with a blog, “Supporting Independent voices”, by Campbell Brown, VP, Global News Partnerships at Facebook.
“In the coming months in the U.S., we’ll introduce a new platform to empower independent writers, helping them reach new audiences and grow their businesses. We will start by partnering with a small subset of independent writers. The platform will include a variety of support focused on content creation and audience growth, including a free, self-publishing tool with robust styling options to create individual websites and an email newsletter”, Campbell said.
The blog also claimed that Facebook had invested $600 million to support journalism since 2018, and it has allocated another $1 billion over the next three years to continue the process.
The platform Facebook is developing will be integrated with Facebook pages, enabling the creation of new content across photos, live videos and stories. Features will be added to Facebook to boost the discovery of new content and to help content creators build a direct relationship with their fans.
The independent writers will also have access to insights to help them understand how their content is performing and monetization tools to help them build individual websites and businesses, with an initial focus on subscriptions.
“The independent creator space is growing. We fully support the work that others are doing and want to ensure that we can provide additional avenues for growth and monetization as well”, noted Campbell Brown.
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