Facebook has unveiled its Snapchat Discover clone
Discover the new Snapchat Discover.
As part of its long-winded announcement of its quest to save journalism, Facebook unveiled a new way for media outlets to share their content, and it looks quite like Snapchat Discover.
Starting Thursday, select publishers will be able to choose a cover image or video and a selection of Instant Articles (the fast-loading version of posts) that users can then swipe through. They can also like, comment and share each individual article. Facebook users can also subscribe to publishers' digest, and therefore, will receive a notification when the latest one is released.
"More than a year after launching Instant Articles, we continue to explore new features that improve the experience for people and publishers alike. Publishers have told us they’d like to experiment with presenting packages of stories to their most engaged readers on Facebook," Josh Roberts, Facebook's product manager, wrote in a blog post about the update.
The ability to swipe through multiple Instant Articles from the same publisher isn't a brand new experience.
As shown in the video below, Facebook users can currently swipe through recently-shared Instant Articles from a single publisher.
This new product differs in that it's a curated collection from the publisher itself and offers a subscription service. Therefore, the update is creating more of a magazine-like experience as part of the Facebook News Feed and offers something similar to Snapchat Discover, the app's network of more than 20 media partners.
Facebook is currently testing the product with ten partners: Bild, BuzzFeed, El Pais, Fox News, Hindustan Times, India Times, Refinery29, USA TODAY, The Sun and the Washington Post.
It remains to be seen whether Facebook will limit the network to a select number of partners (a la Snapchat) or open it up to any publisher like it does now with Instant Articles.
"We’re in the very early stages of developing this feature and understanding which use cases it could enable for our publishing partners," Roberts wrote. "As we better understand the value this experience provides people and publishers, we look forward to working with more of our partners to help shape the future direction of this experience."
Correction, Jan. 11, 2017, 12:45 p.m. EST: A previous version of this story neglected to include one of the test partners. There are ten.
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
