With the launch of instant articles this month, Facebook pointed to a grander ambition, that of being a content hub, one where it wouldn’t even make its users go off-site to find its news.
Facebook has acqui-hired Tugboat Yards, a provider of tools for Web publishers to accept payments from their readers, it was announced via a blog post from Tugboat CEO and co-founder Andrew Anker.
Tugboat disabled new publisher account creation as of Tuesday, and revealed that existing subscriptions will continue to renew until the end of June. On July 1st, though, all new account creation, payment activity and subscription renewal, will be stopped completely, and at that point its users will have two weeks to export their data before it shuts down once and for all. The company is suggesting that its users try services like Memberful, TinyPass and Patreon going forward instead.
Out of the five-person team at Tugboat, Anker is the sole member of the team that will be joining Facebook. He will be working on its media product, specifically in news and video, as well as social publishing. Given Anker’s experience at Tugboat, giving publishers a way to make money, including through a subscription model, the ability to sell merchandise or raising a crowdfunding campaign, it will be interesting to see if Facebook might implement a similar type of solution…….
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Image source: tugboatyards.com