According to an article by Mumbrella, Facebook has today launched a local news and information feature across ten regional Australian cities, including Ballarat, Bendigo, Canberra, Geelong, Gold Coast, Hobart, Newcastle, Toowoomba, Townsville and Wollongong.
The news feature, titled ‘today in,’ launched in six US cities in January this year and is now in more than 200. It has not been introduced anywhere else in the world, making Australia its first international market.
Housed in a separate tab on the Facebook app and website, ‘today in’ features localised news information, such as community updates, weather updates and posts from local officials.
Facebook’s news partnership lead for Australia and New Zealand, Andrew Hunter told Mumbrella about how locations were selected, revealing that research found people in Australia are particularly interested in local news and information.
“There were a few criteria. One was the size of the place, so we’re looking for places with up to 500,000 monthly Facebook users – small to medium-sized towns,” he said. “We’re also looking at the amount of content that’s coming out of those geographies as well. How much news content is coming out on a daily basis, what sort of groups information there is, how active the groups are. Events are another part.”
Facebook users also have the option to receive regular updates from ‘today in’, which highlights the most popular updates, as well as local news in the regular news feed and on publishers’ pages.
