As we shared in October, Facebook has been testing a new feature that uses English
Wikipedia content.[1] When users see news articles in their News Feed, the new feature
provides more context about the article's source by pulling information about the
publishers from English Wikipedia.[2]
The feature was initially made available to a limited number of users based in the United
States as a part of their product testing. Today, Facebook will begin making this feature
available to all of its users in the United States.
The Wikimedia Foundation first learned of the integration of Wikipedia content into
Facebook’s Article Context feature ahead of its initial beta launch in October 2017. This
new feature did not come from a partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation, though we were
in contact with Facebook’s product and engineering teams ahead of this week’s launch.
During their test, Facebook was utilizing (and regularly updating) XML dumps to get the
Wikipedia content. As a part of the full rollout of this feature, they will begin
utilizing our API service - which provides them with more up-to-date content. According to
Facebook, the results of their tests resulted in ~500 views a day. We are confident that
we will be able to handle the scaling up of this feature. However, we will remain in
contact with Facebook should any performance tweaks become necessary.
We are always happy to see people, companies, and organizations recognize Wikipedia’s
value as a repository of free knowledge. At the same time, we are encouraging companies
who use Wikipedia’s content to give back in the spirit of sustainability. Hopefully,
Facebook will feel compelled to do so given their increased recognition of the amazing
free knowledge repository you all have built together.
In the meantime, we are going to be tracking the impact of this new feature on English
Wikipedia. Including looking at how many people click on the link to Wikipedia and seeing
which pages are getting the most traffic. We will continue to keep you updated on our
conversations with Facebook and impact of this new feature.
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-October/088791.html
[2]
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/news-feed-fyi-more-context/
_____________________
Joe Matazzoni
Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco