Facebook is in talks with “half a dozen” prominent digital publishers to host their content on the social network in a move which could speed up loading times on mobile and encourage more clickthroughs.
The social media site has in recent months been vocal in its desire to have publishers invest in a bid to reach its audience, which numbers at 1.4bn users globally each month.
The New York Times reports that it, in addition to BuzzFeed and National Geographic, is in talks with the company to avoid the need for users to leave the site via link to read its content.
Instead, the media companies would outsource their content to Facebook – where they would reap a captive audience, splitting the ad revenue of what the social network must assume will higher traffic than the current system.
Facebook hopes the new format, which will commence testing in the coming months, will result in greater clickthroughs to news content by cutting out loading times to external websites – a move which could encourage mobile consumption for those on limited data plans.
The move represents an integral move for publishers however, with Facebook hosting the content, media companies will likely lose access to the array of valuable advertising information they would have otherwise received.
This comes after the social network in December launched a suite of tools encouraging brands to invest – and track – their Facebook traffic.
