When you’re on Facebook, it’s a very real possibility that you don’t always recognize that the publication behind an article , that’s not good for the social network. Facebook is rolling out a way for publishers to attach their brand logos to article to article links that appear in Facebook search results and trending news. This announcement came on August 23.
This change is nothing more than cosmetic though – publisher logos are going to replace their names beneath article headlines.
The idea behind this change is so that people can become more aware of their news sources on Facebook. They will be less likely to fall for fake news from reputable-sounding news outlets.
“By surfacing publisher logos next to article links, we want to make it easier for publishers to extend their brand identity on Facebook — to enhance people’s awareness of the source of content they see on Facebook, so they can better decide what to read and share,” said Facebook product manager Andrew Anker in a company blog post.
It’s noteworthy that Facebook has opted not to have the logos show up on article links appearing where people are most likely to see them: their news feeds. Maybe that will soon change. “The eventual goal is to extend these to all places where people consume news on our platform,” Anker wrote.
In order for publishers to affix a logo to articles, they have to upload their marks through their Facebook Pages’ Brand Asset Library, which can be found in the Publishing Tools section. Facebook would like to see publishers upload three version of their logos, a colored one, a black one, and a white one. This is so they can properly render regardless of the background.