Nothing attracts news organizations like Facebook. And nothing makes them more nervous.
With 1.4 billion users, the social media site has become a vital source of traffic for publishers looking to reach an increasingly fragmented audience glued to smartphones. In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.
Such a plan would represent a leap of faith for news organizations accustomed to keeping their readers within their own ecosystems, as well as accumulating valuable data on them. Facebook has been trying to allay their fears, according to several of the people briefed on the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were bound by nondisclosure agreements.
Facebook intends to begin testing the new format in the next several months, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. The initial partners are expected to be The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, although others may be added since discussions are continuing. The Times and Facebook are moving closer to a firm deal, one person said.
To make the proposal more appealing to publishers, Facebook has discussed ways for publishers to make money from advertising that would run alongside the content.
Facebook has said publicly that it wants to make the experience of consuming content online more seamless.
News articles on Facebook are currently linked to the publisher's own website, and open in a Web browser, typically taking about eight seconds to load. Facebook thinks that this is too much time, especially on a mobile device, and that when it comes to catching the roving eyeballs of readers, milliseconds matter.
In addition to hosting content directly on Facebook, the company is talking with publishers about other technical ways to hasten delivery of their articles.
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Even marginal increases in the speed of a site, said Edward Kim, chief executive of the analytics and distribution company SimpleReach, generally mean big increases in user satisfaction and traffic. So it is likely, he said, that Facebook's plan focuses on those small improvements, rather than on getting money from deals with media companies.
"But there are a lot of implications for publishers," he added. "It really comes down to how Facebook structures this, and how they can ensure this is a win on both sides."
The issue is also pressing, he said, because some media companies have seen a drop in traffic from Facebook that could be attributed to the company's prioritizing of video - a much more lucrative medium for ad sales.
Video has become increasingly popular with Facebook users and advertisers, and at its developer conference that begins on Wednesday, the company is expected to introduce expanded tools to place video ads inside non-Facebook applications.
Like Facebook, media companies also want improved user experiences. Still, they are treading carefully.
While BuzzFeed has an overt policy of spreading its content outside of its own site, The Times uses a subscription model that provides a growing portion of the company's revenue. It would have to weigh the benefits of reaching Facebook's users - and the ad revenue that comes with them - against the prospect of giving away its content and losing the clicks on its own site that would instead stay within Facebook.
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