Facebook partners with ABC to create 60-second newscasts on Facebook

In Facebook’s latest attempt to begin courting the media, the social networking giant has announced a partnership with ABC that’ll see the news network film one-minute-long newscasts exclusively for Facebook users. ABC will upload the news highlights, officially called ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, or just Facecast, to its Facebook page every weeknight.

“We are grateful that our audience engages with David Muir and “World News Tonight” on social media all day long,” said World News Tonight executive producer Almin Karamehmedovic, as quoted by ABC News. “We’re very excited to launch a newscast that is exclusively for Facebook where users can continue the conversation beyond the evening newscast at any time.”

ABC promises that it’ll deliver breaking news, economic stories, and sports news using videos, images, and infographics. Facecast is very similar to typical newscasts, but it’s more condensed and targeted specifically at mobile users, according to Engadget. The debut episode discussed the new Star Wars trailer, the St. Louis Rams, and a few other hot topics.

“Video on Facebook is growing fast and it’s exciting to see ABC and David Muir create unique content for this platform,” said Andy Mitchell, Facebook’s director of global media partnerships, as quoted by Digital Trends. “A newscast produced for the mobile use case is a great way to leverage Facebook’s platform and engage people in the journalism ABC News is known for.”