This is “Notify” ; Facebook’s StandAlone News Notification App

Facebook now wants to insert itself into your lock screen with the launch of its notification app it calls “Notify”. This was contained in a post yesterday by Julian Gutman who is the product manager for this new app. Facebook is partnering with big names like CNN and BuzzFeed among others to bring you breaking news all in one place. As you might expect, you will be required to follow your favourite publishers and channels. If you see a notification you like, clicking on it would take you to the publisher’s mobile page from where you can read the news in full. If you called this sort of an “aggregator”, you would be right.

Facebook which has over 1.5 billion people has the News Feed from where you can already see news from your favourite and actually click on them to access the news. So why a standalone app to do this? Well Apple now has a pre-installed app it calls News, Facebook set up Instant Articles; a content partnership with big news providers that allows them to publish articles directly on Facebook servers which in turn helps the reader access news faster than before. Google also announced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). So you see the trend. Facebook wants to be a part of this new trend in my opinion. The app is already gaining some buzz online.

You can download the app from the App Store here and as with releases of this nature, it starts with regions and then gradually spreads to other regions. If you’re a USA App Store user, you should be able to download it and start using it right away.