Facebook to launch platform for independent writers, journalists

Facebook has announced that they are in the process of introducing a platform for independent writers and journalists which would support them in terms of content creation, audience growth and monetisation.

In a blogpost published on Tuesday, the social media giant said, “As writers, experts and journalists publish more of their work independently, we’re working to better support those efforts and make it easier for those content creators to build businesses online.”

“In the coming months in the US, 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 [and] independent local journalists who are often the lone voice covering a given community. We’ll work to include them at launch, and build tools and services specific to their needs,” it added.

Reuters reported that this comes in the wake of an increasing number of writers and journalists getting on the email newsletter bandwagon as they prefer the editorial freedom of the medium and the movement away from ad-reliant business models.

The new platform by Facebook will be integrated with Facebook pages to enable publishing across multimedia formats and the option to create Facebook groups, to create a community of readers. Creators will additionally have access to analytics to gauge the performance of their content.

This comes after microblogging platform Twitter made a similar move earlier this year with the acquisition of editorial newsletter tool, Revue. Revue is a service that makes it free and easy for anyone to start and publish editorial newsletters. In a blog, it said that they were “creating a durable incentive model through paid newsletters” as it would “helping writers grow their paid subscribers while also incentivising them to produce engaging and relevant content that drives conversations on Twitter”.