Facebook, in preparation for a news section due to launch later this year, has offered news outlets as much as $3 million to license headlines and article previews. According to sources, Facebook has pitched Disney’s ABC News, Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, The Washington Post and Bloomberg, for deals that would last for three years. Google already offers AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) allowing articles to load quickly on smartphones, and Snapchat has revenue-sharing deals with publishers on its “Discover” tab. Continue reading Latest Facebook Pitch to Publishers Offers Licensing Fees

Google is taking a step in the direction of Snapchat and Instagram Stories, with new technology for mobile devices that lets users easily create and publish visual-centric stories. Dubbed AMP stories, the technology, to debut first as a developer preview, features swipeable slides of text, photos, graphics and videos. Time Warner’s CNN, Condé Nast, Meredith Corp. and Vox Media were among the publishers that aided in its development. AMP stories does not yet allow advertising, unlike Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles. Continue reading Google Debuts AMP Stories With Publisher Content for Mobile

Vox Media, parent company of politics site Vox, sports sites SB Nation, and technology site The Verge, is about to launch Circuit Breaker, a blog about gadgets. Circuit Breaker will publish news and gossip about technology products and primarily live as a Facebook page, not a separate website, says The Verge’s editor Nilay Patel. The idea of a blog devoted to gadgets is a throwback to sites like Engadget and Gizmodo that, in the early 2000s, focused on smartphones and then broadened to become culture sites. Continue reading Vox Media to Launch Circuit Breaker Gadget Site on Facebook

Facebook has a new policy regarding so-called organic, or branded, content, now permitted to appear on Facebook Instant Articles, video and Facebook Live. Advertisers and Web publishers must display an icon to make it clear that the content — articles, videos and images — comes from an advertiser. Up until now, they have only been able to post content in ads. This is good news for BuzzFeed, Forbes and others that frequently supply sponsored content on Facebook, which also stands to reap rewards from the new policy. Continue reading Facebook’s New Policy Allows Branded Content, Not All Ads

Google is readying an attempt to reinvent the mobile Web with its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project, which has taken just nine months to develop and launch. AMP, a response to proprietary platforms such as Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple’s News, is an open source platform that dramatically speeds the loading of Web pages, in part by caching content on the cloud. By the time AMP launches, Google will also allow publishers to track analytics, sell ads and put paywalls in place. Continue reading Google to Speed Up the Web with Open Source AMP Initiative

Apple is launching Apple News, a news reading app with content from leading media companies that gives publishers another venue for ads. The launch comes at the same time that Apple approved ad-blocking apps such as the just-released 99 cent Blockr, a concern among publishers looking for more savvy ways to take advantage of the burgeoning number of digital platforms. Among the companies committed to publishing on Apple News is GQ (sponsored by Burberry) and recipe site Epicurious (sponsored by Campbell’s Soup and Reynolds). Continue reading Media Publishers and Their Sponsors Gravitate to Apple News

While social networks such as Facebook and Twitter prefer to describe themselves as content distribution platforms rather than content publishing platforms, denying any involvement in the editorial reshaping of what users see (despite their editorial ability to remove content from their sites), a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center reveals that Facebook and Twitter users across multiple demographics in the United States are increasingly turning to the two services to access external news. Continue reading Pew Research: Facebook, Twitter Are Preferred News Sources