Facebook is expanding its 'Today In' service to 6,000 U.S. communities, up from 400, in an effort to expose people in 'news deserts' to more local news and information.
FILE - This July 16, 2013, file photo shows a sign at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook is trying to coax “news deserts” into bloom with the expansion of a tool that provides people with local news and information, but says it still has a lot to learn. The social media giant said Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019, it is expanding its “Today In” service to 6,000 cities and towns across the U.S., up from 400 previously.
The social media giant said Thursday it is expanding its “Today In” service to 6,000 cities and towns across the U.S., up from 400. Launched in early 2018, the service lets Facebook users opt into local news and information from local organizations. Such news can include missing-person alerts, local election results, road closures and crime reports.
The service aggregates posts from the official Facebook pages for news organizations, government agencies and community groups like dog shelters. It uses software filters to weed out objectionable content. “There is no silver bullet,” Campbell Brown, head of global news partnerships at Facebook, said in an interview. “We really want to help publishers address challenges in local markets.”
Already, Facebook says it’s learned from publishers’ input about what doesn’t work. For instance, it now only allows posts from publishers registered with its “News page index,” which means they meet guidelines such as a focus on current events and information, citing sources and including dates and don’t have a record of publishing false news and misinformation.
Jimmy O’Keefe, a product marketing manager at Facebook, said that while people scroll through their news feeds passively, people engage with articles more when they appear in Today In.half of the news stories
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