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| Facebook launches Bulletin news product |
Facebook launched its Bulletin, a free and paid independent article and podcast platform designed to compete with Substack.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the platform, available through Bulletin.com, and introduced some writers the company had pulled into the audio room via Facebook.
Facebook is trying to compete with the rapidly growing trend in email communications, where famous journalists and writers have left media companies and worked for themselves over the past year.
Substack is a self-publishing platform that has helped writers sell email subscriptions and attract journalists through cash advances.
Other tech companies are also competing in this space, including Twitter, which has acquired newsletter platform Revue.
Facebook said it will not receive any portion of the creator's advertising earnings at the time of publication. Substack charges 10% commission on subscription. The magazine gets 5% commission.
Advertising allows content creators to choose the price of their subscription. The author retains full ownership of his work and his list of subscribers.
Facebook launched the platform with many celebrities and writers, including Erin Andrews, Malcolm Gladwell and Tan France. It covers a range of topics from sports and finance to science and medicine.
Announcement to leave Facebook
Zuckerberg said the advertising is part of the social media giant's mission to continue developing monetization tools for content creators.
The social network's relationship with the news industry has been strained, culminating in February after a dispute with the Australian government over payment of content fees for news media.
After the conflict, Facebook pledged to invest $1 billion in the global news industry over the next three years.
The company said articles and podcasts are also available through the Facebook News Feed and Facebook News section.
She stated that she created the newsletter through a separate site. It's about giving content creators the ability to grow their audience in ways that don't just rely on the Facebook platform.
He added that it primarily advertises to US creators and is not currently accepting new creators. But she said the ad is available worldwide. He is looking forward to adding more international names after the beta test.
In April of this year, the social media giant announced that it was spending $5 million to recruit freelance local journalists to write on the new platform.