Facebook News in Germany – the rollout has started
This is what the news tab looks like in Germany. (Image: Facebook)
On May 18, Facebook announced that it had launched its news tab offer in Germany. Now the first users can see it in the Facebook app.
With the new news tab in the app and on the web, Facebook wants, according to the manager Jesper Doub, to “provide more quality journalism and at the same time offer publishers more opportunities for monetization”. With at least 35 publishers, Facebook had come to an agreement in Germany. T3n is also represented with its own range.
We can now also use the news tab on an editorial smartphone. (Screenshot: t3n)
However, it took another four weeks for the offer in the rollout to spread so widely that it is increasingly being used by users. The Facebook News tab is a separate section that can be called up by tapping (in the app) or clicking (on the web) and which then shows the latest news.
Contents
Facebook News tab partly curated, partly algorithmic
These are provided by the cooperating media houses, who can produce them specifically for this purpose, but do not have to. Upday, an Axel Springer subsidiary that has so far mainly aggregated news for Samsung smartphones, is responsible for compiling an overview of the headlines.
As usual, most of the rest of the news tab is also algorithmic. Facebook tailors your news tab based on what else you read, share or subscribe to. You also have the opportunity to specifically personalize the suggestions. This works in the same way as with Google Discover, with the option of selecting “more of it” or “less of it”.
In addition to the cross-category headlines, Facebook sorts the news into traditional categories such as technology, health or entertainment. There can be so-called collections on major topics. These are collections of contributions from several participating media partners who only have one topic in common. In mid-May, Facebook created such a collection on the subject of Covid-19.
