Facebook, Storyful team up for newswire project

Facebook has teamed up with Storyful, a Dublin-headquartered social media news agency, to create a newsfeed of original content published by users of the social network.

The new project is called FB Newswire and will be constantly updated with newsworthy content on topics ranging from breaking news to sports results, entertainment and weather.

Storyful, which was founded by former Prime Time presenter Mark Little, said in a blog post: "We are partnering with Facebook to build a real-time home for verified images, posts and video."

“We hope it will serve as a powerful tool and destination for newsrooms and journalists who are trying to source authentic content and amazing news stories,” it added.

“We believe this new newswire, powered by Storyful, will prove Facebook is both an origin and destination for news and can showcase Storyful’s ability to surface real-time stories from around the world.”

Storyful said Facebook users shared an estimated 684,478 pieces of content every minute making it an important source of information.

The move by Facebook towards producing and highlighting more of its news content is seen as part of its move to combat rivals Twitter and Reddit.

Storyful was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp on December 18th last year for €18 million.

Its clients include the BBC, The New York Times and other large media news brands.