Facebook will this morning implement its long-awaited plan to publish articles from selected news organisations, which will appear in the social media giant's News Feed.
According to various international media reports, publications involved in the initial rollout of Facebook's "Instant Articles" are the New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC and The Atlantic.
Meanwhile, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild are expected to join the initiative soon.
There are no commitments from any publisher to run a certain amount of articles with Facebook, and any publisher can walk away from the agreement at any point, says online publication Re/code. The publishers involved in the deal are reportedly careful to describe their participation as an "experiment" at this stage.
The New York Times explains news publishers can either sell and embed advertisements in the articles, keeping all of the revenue, or allow Facebook to sell ads, with the social network getting 30% of the proceeds. "Facebook is also permitting the news companies to collect data about the people reading the articles with the same tools they use to track visitors to their own sites," says the publication.
"For publishers, the Facebook initiative represents the latest in a series of existential balancing acts. The social network, which has more than 1.4 billion active users worldwide, captures more attention of mobile users - and prompts more visits to news sites - than virtually any other service."
The rollout, it has been reported, represents a huge change in how people get their news and could largely increase readership for the articles published on the social media platform. Facebook has 1.4 billion users per month, with 83% coming from outside the US and Canada.
Publishers have little choice but to cooperate with Facebook, Vivian Schiller ? a former executive at NBC, The New York Times and Twitter, who now advises media companies and brands ? told the Times. "That's where the audience is. It's too massive to ignore."