A Facebook subscription service is coming soon, a top company executive has revealed at the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit. Campbell Brown, the head of Facebook’s new partnerships business, has confirmed details of the coming Facebook Paywall also to Techcrunch.
Brown revealed that Facebook is in early talks with several news publishers about further supporting business models on Facebook. As part of the Facebook Journalism Project, the social media service is thinking about creating a Facebook subscription service for news stories.
A source close to Facebook told TechCrunch that the project involves a Facebook paywall. This will allow users to only view a limited amount of articles per month for free. After that amount, visitors will need to sign up for a subscription or log in with an existing one.
Moreover, the same source explains Facebook’s media partners will maintain control over which stories are locked behind the Facebook paywall. In addition, the media partners of Facebook will have control over their subscriber data too.
Facebook subscription service payments
Despite the fact that the project appears to be underway, it’s still in its infancy. For example, we don’t know yet how payment will be taken for subscribers that sign-up via the Facebook paywall.
Digiday reports that Facebook is considering bypassing Google Play and Apple’s App Store, in order to avoid the 30% cut for digital payments. That could bring up the need for a mobile web payment option, which will surely get in the way of the user experience.
Of course, no one knows which media firms will participate in that project, collaborating with Facebook. There is certainly much to be confirmed about this project. However, Brown’s statement means that Facebook is getting ready for a news-related plan.
