Facebook announces partnership with a group of news organizations

A new report from App Annie has shown that the US users spend most of their time in Facebook Inc sessions, which has proved the quantum of power in hands of the social media giant. Facebook has the ability to generate traffic and buzz for media websites.

Being self-aware of its own capabilities, Facebook has announced a partnership with a group of news organizations, including The New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Guardian and others.

The partnership is related to a project named, 'Instant Articles', under which Facebook will be giving its users direct and instant access to the entire new stories published by these partners within its mobile app.

Initially, the partnership sounded favorable to the publishers, who will get to reach to the huge Facebook user base, having them read their content. They will be able to earn 70% of advertising revenues by monetizing from their content. But, then the question rose that what does Facebook gain from this project, after giving most of the revenues to the publishers?

It can be easily imagined that the interests of Facebook behind this deal are greater than earning short-term revenues. The social networking site is looking forward to remain dominant consumer of its users' time and interest.

Any deviation in its users' interest could become a reason for fall of its empire. Hence, projects like Instant Articles are just a way of keeping users engaged and ruling out the possibility that they even think about going elsewhere.

Facebook's new move could harmful for the growth of publishers-cum-partners, who are increasingly becoming dependent on the social network for keeping their content live. By doing so, these publishing companies will become vulnerable to the unpredictable nature of Facebook, which can disrupt their business models.

Instant Articles will make Facebook a dominant referrer of online news traffic and, if gets successful in its new venture, companies like the New York Times, BuzzFeed and Bild will become dependent on Facebook a sizable part for their revenues. However, this could also have a positive impact as these websites' dependence on Google will reduce.

In such a situation, Facebook will get a serious amount of negotiating power, of the kind that Google is enjoying today.