Facebook launched its e-newsletter product “Bulletin” on Tuesday, a standalone platform without cost and paid articles and podcasts that can intention to rival Substack.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the platform, which is stay at Bulletin.com, and launched among the writers that the corporate has recruited in a stay audio room on Facebook.
Facebook is pushing to compete within the fast-growing electronic mail e-newsletter development, as high-profile journalists and writers have left media corporations over the previous yr to strike out on their very own.
Self-publishing platform Substack is a pacesetter in serving to writers promote electronic mail subscriptions, and has lured journalists with money advances. Other tech corporations are additionally competing within the discipline, together with Twitter, which acquired e-newsletter platform Revue.
Facebook stated it will not take a reduce of Bulletin creators’ income at launch and that creators can select their very own subscription costs. It is launching the platform with numerous high-profile personalities and writers, together with sportscaster Erin Andrews, creator Malcolm Gladwell and “Queer Eye” star Tan France.
The social community has had a tumultuous relationship with the information trade, which got here to a head in February after a showdown with the Australian authorities over paying information retailers for content material. Following the battle, Facebook pledged to make investments $1 billion within the information trade globally over the following three years.
The firm stated the articles and podcasts would even be accessible by way of the Facebook News Feed and thru Facebook’s News part.
“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 stated on the brand new website.
Facebook stated it was primarily launching with U.S. creators and it was not accepting new ones right now. But it stated the Bulletin website was accessible worldwide and it will look to add extra worldwide names after the beta take a look at.
In April, Facebook stated it will pay $5 million to recruit unbiased native journalists to write for its new publishing platform.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
