The social media networking site Facebook is in talks with a number of media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook, The New York Times reported.
The aim of Facebook is to keep users on its site. The social media company hopes to start testing the new format in the next few months. Facebook's first hosted partners are National Geographic, BuzzFeed and The New York Times, according to Fast Company.
In addition, California-based Facebook is holding discussions with publishers about other technical ways to speed up the delivery of their articles. The social network aims to make the experience of consuming content online more seamless.
At present, news articles on the social media site are linked to the website of the publisher. They open in a web browser and take about eight seconds to load. According to Facebook, even milliseconds matter when it comes to attracting the attention of readers.
Edward Kim, chief executive of SimpleReach, said that even slight increases in the speed of a site mean huge increases in user satisfaction and traffic.
Facebook has declined to comment on its discussions with publishers. In the past, the social networking site has not done any kind of revenue-sharing with publishers. However, recently the company has been experimenting with revenue-sharing options.
Facebook's proposal carries a risk for content publishers: loss of precious customer data. When a visitor clicks on an article, a host of tracking tools enable the host site to gather valuable customer data, such as who they are and how frequently they visit the site.
That data might go to Facebook. The social media network might use that information to target consumers more effectively for advertisers. However, Facebook has not disclosed how much of that data it would be willing to share.