Facebook launches its News tab for select users in the US

It's taken over your social life and your event planning, and now Facebook wants to bring you the news too: it's rolling out a dedicated news tab in its mobile apps, offering up headlines from a selected number of publishers.

You won't necessarily see this in your own Facebook app yet though, as the feature has only been enabled for a select number of users in the US so far, and there's no set timescale for a wider roll out.

The news tab "gives people more control over the stories they see, and the ability to explore a wider range of their news interests, directly within the Facebook app," Facebook's Campbell Brown said in a blog post.

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"It also highlights the most relevant national stories of the day. News articles will continue to appear in News Feed as they do today," adds Brown.

Read all about it

Facebook says the news tab will incorporate four categories: general, topical, diverse and local news. To appear in the app tab, publishers must register with Facebook and abide by its guidelines.

You'll be able to customize the stories you see as well, hiding publications you don't want to read, and picking your favorite topics (like entertainment, health, business, sports and so on).

A mixture of algorithms and human curation is going to be used to select the stories that show up, Facebook says, and the feature has been developed in consultation with publishers.

As yet there's no sign of the News tab appearing on the web. You can read more about the initiative, and see some of the publishers that have signed up, at the dedicated Facebook News page.

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