Facebook’s Message to Content Makers: We Own the Audience

Even before Facebook executives began talking about new plans for articles and videos on its platform at this week’s F8 developers conference, there was grumbling from the media executives present.

Part of it was residual angst from a newspaper report that publications like the New York Times, National Geographic and BuzzFeed, among others, might allow Facebook to host their articles natively on the platform. While that could help those publishers better reach Facebook’s huge audience, and let readers browse faster, it would mean people no longer have to go to their sites to read articles they want.