Facebook last year started providing more background information about the publishers and articles users see in News Feed. Today the company is rolling out this feature to everyone in the US and adding additional features to provide more context to users.
Facebook said that its internal research within the company’s community, academic, and industry partners have identified that additional key information helps users evaluate the credibility of an article and determine whether to trust the article’s source.
With the same goal, Facebook is making it easy for people to view context about the article, it will also include the publisher’s Wikipedia entry, related articles on the same topic, information about how many times the article has been shared on Facebook, where it is has been shared, as well as an option to follow the publisher’s page.
Facebook will indicate that the information is unavailable in case the publisher does not have a Wikipedia entry. Additionally, Facebook is also introducing ‘More From This Publisher’, which will give users a quick snapshot of the other recent stories posted by the publisher and ‘Shared By Friends‘ which will show users if any of their friends have shared the article.
Facebook will also display more information about the author if the publisher has implemented author tags on their website to associate the author’s Page or Profile to the article byline, and the publisher has validated their association to the publisher. However, this is a small test which is starting in the US.