Windows 10: Introducing Facebook News

As we looked to build a place where people can find more news on Facebook, we changed our approach to gather insight from journalists and publishers before we started developing a product. As Mark Zuckerberg said in a conversation with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Europe’s largest publisher Axel Springer, we wanted to build this product in a consultative way, sharing our ideas and getting input from the industry. We talked to news organizations about what they’d like to see included in a news tab, how their stories should be presented and what analytics to provide.

As we talked to people and publishers, we identified key features to help make Facebook News valuable:

• Today’s Stories chosen by a team of journalists to catch you up on the news throughout the day
• Personalization based on the news you read, share and follow, so you can find new interests and topics and Facebook News is fresh and interesting every time you open it
• Topic sections to dive deeper into business, entertainment, health, science & tech, and sports
• Your Subscriptions, a section for people who have linked their paid news subscriptions to their Facebook account
• Controls to hide articles, topics and publishers you don’t want to see

Regarding personalization, publishers worry that machine learning has limits and they’re right. We have progress to make before we can rely on technology alone to provide a quality news destination. We also aim to serve both people and news publishers, and not just the big national players. We want new forms of journalism in the digital age, including individual, independent journalism, to flourish. So we will continue to expand the algorithmic selection of stories driving the majority of Facebook News.

When we started talking to news organizations about building Facebook News earlier this year, they emphasized that original reporting is more expensive to produce and better recognized by seasoned journalists than by algorithms. So to help reward this kind of work, we formed a curation team to manage the Today’s Stories section of Facebook News. The team will have editorial independence and will select stories based on publicly available guidelines, which you can learn about at facebook.com/news.

What You Can Expect to See in Facebook News

Facebook News will feature a wide range of content across four categories of publishers: general, topical, diverse and local news. At the beginning of the year, we surveyed over 100,000 people on Facebook in the US about what topics they were most interested in and found that we were under-serving many topics people wanted most in their News Feeds, especially around categories like entertainment, health, business and sports. We took this into consideration as we identified publishers across those four categories.

How do we identify these publishers? They need to be in our News Page Index, which we developed in collaboration with the industry to identify news content. They also need to abide by Facebook’s Publisher Guidelines, these include a range of integrity signals in determining product eligibility, including misinformation — as identified based on third-party fact checkers — community standards violations (e.g., hate speech), clickbait, engagement bait and others. We’ll continually check Pages’ integrity status to ensure eligibility criteria is consistently being met. Lastly, they must serve a sufficiently large audience, with different thresholds for the four categories of publishers.

Our criteria will evolve over time to make sure people are seeing sources that are valuable to them and that we’re including reporting across these topics.

During the initial test, we’ll showcase local original reporting by surfacing local publications from the largest major metro areas across the country, beginning with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington DC, Miami, Atlanta and Boston. In the coming months, we’ll include local news from Today In, our local news and community information tab, which recently expanded to over 6,000 US towns and cities.

Facebook News was built to bring people closer to the stories that affect their lives. We’ll continue to learn, listen and improve News as it rolls out more broadly. We hope this work aids in our effort to sustain great journalism and strengthen democracy.


Source: Introducing Facebook News | Facebook Newsroom

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Introducing New Tools for Facebook Fundraisers

More Ways to Make an Impact for Personal Causes

People on Facebook have raised money for many personal causes, including loved ones who need critical surgery, teachers needing school supplies for their students, and families in need after losing everything in a fire. We’ve added more categories for fundraisers for personal causes to give people more options to raise critical funds for themselves, a friend, or something or someone not on Facebook.

Based on feedback from our community, we’re adding fundraiser categories for family (like adoption or new baby supplies), faith (like missions or religious community events), travel (like educational trips or travel for medical needs), and volunteering (like volunteer programs or supplies) causes. We’ve already seen examples of people using these new categories, like Lauren Pyskoty who started a fundraiser to support her first mission trip and raised $1,328. These are in addition to existing categories for personal fundraisers: community projects/groups, sports/competitions, education, medical, pets/animals, personal emergency, crisis relief, and memorial/loss.

We’re inspired by the many ways people have come together to support one another. In the coming weeks, we’re eliminating the platform fee on all fundraisers for personal causes, so that people can maximize their fundraising support. There will still be a small fee charged for payment processing and applicable taxes.

To create a fundraiser for a nonprofit or a personal cause, visit facebook.com/fundraisersor tap the Fundraisers bookmark on your Facebook app. You can choose the cause you want to support, share why it’s important to you, and follow the steps to set up your goal.

We know people care a lot about the organizations and causes they support. We’re grateful for their passion and for the feedback that helps us build better tools to help them reach their fundraising goals.


Downloads:

• Download Product Screenshots and Demo Video

Source: Introducing New Tools for Facebook Fundraisers | Facebook Newsroom

 

Introducing New Tools for Facebook Fundraisers

More Ways to Make an Impact for Personal Causes

People on Facebook have raised money for many personal causes, including loved ones who need critical surgery, teachers needing school supplies for their students, and families in need after losing everything in a fire. We’ve added more categories for fundraisers for personal causes to give people more options to raise critical funds for themselves, a friend, or something or someone not on Facebook.

Based on feedback from our community, we’re adding fundraiser categories for family (like adoption or new baby supplies), faith (like missions or religious community events), travel (like educational trips or travel for medical needs), and volunteering (like volunteer programs or supplies) causes. We’ve already seen examples of people using these new categories, like Lauren Pyskoty who started a fundraiser to support her first mission trip and raised $1,328. These are in addition to existing categories for personal fundraisers: community projects/groups, sports/competitions, education, medical, pets/animals, personal emergency, crisis relief, and memorial/loss.

We’re inspired by the many ways people have come together to support one another. In the coming weeks, we’re eliminating the platform fee on all fundraisers for personal causes, so that people can maximize their fundraising support. There will still be a small fee charged for payment processing and applicable taxes.

To create a fundraiser for a nonprofit or a personal cause, visit facebook.com/fundraisersor tap the Fundraisers bookmark on your Facebook app. You can choose the cause you want to support, share why it’s important to you, and follow the steps to set up your goal.

We know people care a lot about the organizations and causes they support. We’re grateful for their passion and for the feedback that helps us build better tools to help them reach their fundraising goals.


Downloads:

• Download Product Screenshots and Demo Video

Source: Introducing New Tools for Facebook Fundraisers | Facebook Newsroom

 

Facebook Marketplace Turns Two: Introducing New AI Features and More

We’re also testing camera features that could use AI to recommend products you might be interested in. Say you liked your friend’s headphones and wanted your own; you could snap a photo of the headphones and Marketplace’s AI technology could recommend similar listings for sale nearby.

In the future, AI could help simplify tasks like completing an outfit or home design project. For example, you could upload a photo of your living room and get suggestions on furniture to buy based on your layout and size.

More Shopping Options at Your Fingertips

In addition to adding new AI features, we’ve added a variety of content from businesses including cars, home rentals, home services as well as shopping and deals from e-commerce merchants.

Today, vehicles is one of the most popular categories for Marketplace globally, alongside furniture and electronics. Since introducing car listings from local dealerships one year ago, Marketplace has become one of the top destinations for people to buy and sell used cars. And I’m one of them. In fact, my family just sold our car to a man who is planning to use it to help grow his small business.

Building a Safe, Trusted Community

When it comes to shopping online, it’s important to have confidence in the people and businesses you’re buying from. That’s why we’ve invested in features that create a safer and more trusted community, including:

• Detecting and Removing Inappropriate Content: Thanks to our AI technology, we are working to detect and remove items that violate our policies by analyzing the images, content, and context within a listing.
• Buyer and Seller Ratings: Buyers and sellers can now rate each other to signal whether they had a good or bad experience, as well as leave feedback on where they can improve such as response time, friendliness and reliability. In addition to helping people make more informed decisions on who to transact with, community ratings help create a better experience by promoting good behavior.
• More Robust Reporting Tools: Our community helps us make buying and selling better for everyone by reporting content that doesn’t belong on Marketplace. If you see an item for sale that you believe violates our Commerce Policies, you can easily report the listing. You can also report buyers and sellers if you see activity that you think shouldn’t be on Facebook.

How to report a listing in Marketplace.

We’re continuously exploring ways that could help people make more informed decisions on who to buy and sell with, like badges for buyers and sellers who have confirmed their identity and features that make it easier for sellers to select a nearby public place to meet in person. To learn more about how to buy and sell safely on Marketplace, please visit this link.

We’re Just Getting Started

Looking back on the past two years, we’re so inspired by people around the world using Marketplace to do amazing things. Stories from people like Ron Rudolph in Minnesota, who bonded with his family and community after losing his wife to cancer by selling birdhouses for a cause. Or Alisa Herrera-Hayman in New Zealand, who uses Marketplace to strive towards a zero-waste lifestyle and help the environment by shopping secondhand. Or the many parents in my local community I’ve connected with who share the same interests as me.

We’ll continue working to deliver new product features to discover, buy, and sell the things you love. So whether that’s shopping locally secondhand, finding new items from popular brands, or getting exclusive deals from retailers in time for the holidays, expect to see more from us.

You can start buying and selling on Marketplace by going to Facebook.com/Marketplace.


Source: Marketplace Turns Two: Introducing New AI Features and More | Facebook Newsroom