Facebook has released an app
for iPhone owners
called Notify that gathers
news and
entertainment stories into
one regularly updated
feed.
CNN, Fox News and the
Washington Post are among
the 70 organisations
providing stories to the app.
Anyone who installs the app
chooses their own mix of
sources that will post
notifications to their feed.
It competes directly with
Twitter's Moments and
Apple's News service, which
create feeds of breaking
stories.
The feed of stories could be
customised by choosing
from several different
categories, including movies,
music, sport, news and
celebrities, Facebook said in
a post.
There are also categories for
daily meditation
exercises and another from
the Getty picture library
showing iconic images from the
same day in history.
Currently, the Notify service
is available only to
iPhone-owning Facebook
members in the United
States.
Facebook has not said when or
if the service will be
extended to other parts of
the world or other
operating systems.
Notifications about new
articles appear on the lock
screen of an iPhone and can
be shared from that
display.
Mark Mulligan, managing
director of analyst company
Midia Research, said the move
made sense because
Facebook had become the
"jumping off point into
our digital lives".
"The better a job it can
do of this, the better it locks
users in," he said.
"It has seen standout success with
spinning out Messenger and
recognises that the more
touchpoints it can develop
with its users, the more it
can create greater loyalty."
Notify comes soon after
Facebook unveiled its Instant
Articles service In May. This
sought to speed up the
delivery of off-site content
by hosting it in its own
data centres. Articles from
BuzzFeed, National
Geographic, the New York
Times and six other media
organisations are featured on
the service.
Instant Articles is initially
available only on iPhones
but tests of an Android
version have begun.
A similar, rival service
called the Accelerated Mobile
Pages (AMP) initiative was
launched by Google and
many other web firms in
October.
AMP stored slimmed down
copies of stories from
dozens of news organisations
to enable them to load
faster on portable devices.
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