Facebook and ABC News launch first social media newscast

Starting this week, Facebook users may have noticed “Facecast,” a one-minute video update of world news hosted by ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir. The partnership is the first of its kind — a short newscast exclusively for a social media site.

According to a press release from ABC News, “Facecast: The One Thing” will air every weekday and feature global news and trending topics. Yesterday’s debut covered the St. Louis Rams players’ response to Ferguson and Cyber Monday sales, and garnered about 60,000 views within its first two hours, according to MediaBistro.. While Facecast is still in its beginning stages, MediaBistro noted that a recent Facebook event hosted by George Stephanopoulos to answer viewer questions about Ebola had more than 10 million viewers, a stark difference to yesterday’s Facecast.

The newscast is filmed in ABC’s New York offices and may be the start of other journalism and social media partnerships. “A newscast produced for the mobile use case is a great way to leverage Facebook’s platform and engage people in the journalism ABC News is known for,” said Andy Mitchell, ABC’s director of news and global media partnerships.