Facebook's News Platform "Bulletin" is now live.
ByFaisal Chughtai | Published date:
(Image credit: Unsplash)
On Tuesday, Facebook unveiled "Bulletin," a standalone site for free and paid articles and podcasts that would compete with Substack.
In a live audio chat on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched the platform, which is now available at Bulletin.com, and presented some of the authors the firm has hired.
As high-profile journalists and authors have left media organizations to set out on their own in the last year, Facebook is attempting to compete in the fast-growing email newsletter trend.
Substack, a self-publishing platform that helps writers sell email subscriptions, has enticed journalists with cash advances. Twitter, which just bought newsletter platform Revue, is one of the other digital businesses in the industry.
Facebook has stated that it will not take a part of the income generated by Bulletin creators at launch and that artists will be able to set their own subscription pricing. The site will be launched alongside several high-profile personalities and authors, including sportscaster Erin Andrews, author Malcolm Gladwell, and "Queer Eye" actress Tan France.
The social media platform has had a turbulent history with the news business, which reached a head in February following a spat with the Australian government about content payment. Following the disagreement, Facebook announced a $1 billion investment in the global journalism business over the next three years.
According to the firm, the articles and podcasts will also be available through Facebook's News Feed and News section.
"We built Bulletin on a separate website to enable creators to grow their audience in ways that are not exclusively dependent on the Facebook platform," it said on the new site.
Facebook stated that it was primarily beginning with American creators and was not currently accepting new ones. However, it stated that the Bulletin site was accessible from everywhere in the world and that after the beta test, it would try to add more foreign names.
Facebook said in April that it would spend $5 million to hire local journalists to write for its new publishing platform.
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