Facebook to allow publishers to start charging readers for stories

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg  JUSTIN SULLIVAN/Getty Images/AFP

Facebook has certainly become some sort of  a new form of media for most people, making news from outlets accessible and free at all times.

However, the famed social network is reportedly pivoting from its free distribution of news material by introducing a subscription service set to be tested this October.

According to Yahoo Finance, Facebook is now looking to make money off its platform, reminding publishers of a “10 free articles” per month quota before the paywall agreement kicks in.

“One of the things we heard in our initial meetings from many newspapers and digital publishers is that ‘we want a subscription product—we want to be able to see a paywall in Facebook,’” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships, was quoted as saying in a report from The Street.

 “And that is something we’re doing now. We are launching a subscription product,” he confirmed.

Further details of the the new agreement have yet to be made public, but the social platform guaranteed that publishers will retain full access and control over their subscriber data.

The subscription fee, meanwhile, comes after Facebook launched several improvements on its publisher offerings including the “Instant Article” feature.  Khristian Ibarrola /ra