As established media around the world struggle, individual journalists and content writers, using the power of social media platforms, are becoming information brands themselves. And there is a marked trend towards email newsletters from these individual journalists and content creators. Substack desktop publishing platform is a leader in helping writers sell email subscriptions and has lured journalists with cash advances. Other companies are also competing in the field, including Twitter, which recently acquired newsletter platform Revue. And now Facebook has jumped on the bandwagon with its own new newsletter platform: Bulletin. The newsletter will allow publishers to publish free and paid newsletters that can be posted on the web, mailed to subscribers, and of course, shared on Facebook. As is customary these days, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his company's live audio rooms to announce the new platform.
Facebook won't apply a fee reduction to writers
“It's something we've been working on for some time. The goal here across the company is to support people who make a living doing creative work,” Zuckerberg said at the launch.
Bulletin has gone online with an initial list of authors. It's obviously a small group, and Facebook has said it will add a lot more in the coming days.
The newsletter will have a mix of free and paid content. Some items will be available for free, while others will be behind a paywall, and paying subscribers will have access to premium features.
Facebook has no plans to charge writers. For the record, Substack charges a 10% fee on subscription revenue, while Revue has a 5% discount.
Apparently Facebook is paying some writers for their participation.
For starters, Facebook offers a multi-year license agreement to give selected authors time to build a relationship with their readers.
"Through Bulletin, we want to support these creators and unify our existing tools with something that can more directly support quality writing and audio content, from podcasts to live audio rooms, all in one place. We respect the work of writers and want to be clear that anyone who partners with us will have full editorial independence,” Campbell Brown, vice president of Global News Partnerships and Anthea Watson Strong, product manager, news, Facebook, said in a post from Blog.
Interestingly, Bulletin is not part of the main Facebook app because the bulletin platform has its own website and branding. But it will use Facebook's distribution tools. The newsletters will be integrated into the author's Facebook page.
Each platform creator will have a separate website with their own branding and will be able to customize the color scheme, logo and name of their posts, as well as personalize their posts with multimedia integrations and other design options.
Facebook said the articles and podcasts will also be available through the Facebook news feed and the Facebook News section.
To help editors keep discussions respectful, the Bulletin will also offer comment moderation tools, such as the ability for editors to control who can comment (such as paid subscribers only) and to disable comments.
Bulletin launched with writers and personalities including sportscaster Erin Andrews, author Malcolm Gladwell and "Queer Eye" star Tan France.
This foray by Facebook is interesting given its cool relationship with the news industry. A few months ago, he had a big dispute with the Australian government over paying media outlets for content.