Nerds, discuss:

About three weeks ago, the New York Times reported on Facebook courting news organizations (read: content producers) for a new joint venture. The social media monolith had quietly held talks for months, “with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.”

So what does this mean? What would it look like?

“Such a plan would represent a leap of faith for news organizations accustomed to keeping their readers within their own ecosystems, as well as accumulating valuable data on them. Facebook has been trying to allay their fears, according to several of the people briefed on the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were bound by nondisclosure agreements.”

Among those named in the article were The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic with the promise of more joining in soon.

But back to Facebook’s new plan – serve content from officially approved news sources directly to users within the network via their timeline or a right hand rail widget (i.e. visiting Facebook.com, or using an official mobile app).

“To make the proposal more appealing to publishers, Facebook has discussed ways for publishers to make money from advertising that would run alongside the content.”

So to recap – news content providers publish items directly to Facebook, with some form of advertising model baked in (linked keywords to affiliate links, thumbnails, pixel tracking, etc), promising faster load times and more eyes on the content than resource heavy sites like The Daily Beast typically see.

Now normally I’d expect any move by Facebook, Google, Twitter and the like to get shut down immediately by older media (what I’d refer to as anything that has held a fully staffed newsroom for at least 25 years).

We may be accustomed to #twitterfeeds across the bottom of our evening news (and morning news, and local weather, sports, and every other nationally broadcast lowest-common-denominator entertainment) but if we thinks about it that disruption is relatively recent. Twitter’s been around for almost 10 years – but rampant hashtag screen real estate imperialism has only been around for about the last 6?

What happens to those smaller news outlets (with niche audiences or dissenting / unpopular opinions, or even college or high school publications) that can’t afford to join in on the Facebook fun? Man – wouldn’t that create something like a fast lane – slow lane dichotomy? Really sounds familiar to me. I can’t quite place it though – Mark do you have any idea what I’m thinking of?

“Facebook continues to support principles of Net neutrality for both landline and wireless networks,” the company’s Washington, D.C.-based policy spokesman, Andrew Noyes, said in a statement. “Preserving an open Internet that is accessible to innovators–regardless of their size or wealth–will promote a vibrant and competitive marketplace where consumers have ultimate control over the content and services delivered through their Internet connections.” – CNET

So….has Facebook just hypocritically pulled a 180 on ‪net neutrality‬?

Should they / can be held to the same standards as ISPs if people only access the “internet” through Facebook (Here’s lookin’ at you again, Internet.org)? Or are they just a publicly traded ad platform that sells users to content and content to users above the law of the land?

They already give natively uploaded video the preferential bump in edge rank.

Facebook (and Twitter and Google) have zero obligation to treat all content equally – we know they don’t because advertisers have continued to pay for increased reach, clicks, and impressions. But what happens when Facebook IS your whole internet?

More on my love/hate relationship with Internet.org soon.