Earlier this week, The New York Times' Mike Isaac landed more details about Facebook's ($FB) cautious re-entry into the news game. Facebook plans to "hire a team of editors to work on a news initiative called News Tab" which, unlike the social network's previous — and much-criticized — reliance on algorithms to push news, will be run by "seasoned journalists from various outlets".

While the new job listings are indeed up and likely collecting thousands of resumes, data reveals Facebook has been actively building out its news team since December 2018 with a series of hiring sprees for dealmakers and product professionals.

This week, a new opening for "News Curator, Media Partnerships" in several locales showed up on Facebook's careers site, declaring that the company is "building a new tab for news that will give more visibility to the journalism of our news partners". 

But before this week, Facebook has been quietly hiring professionals to drum up news and media relationships, with a minor hiring run begining in December 2018.

The listings, before Facebook went public with its News Tab, have been for titles like "Strategic Partner, News Partnerships" and "Deal Team" who ostensibly would lock in partnerships with the outlets now incoming News Curators would work with. That's because Facebook sees a future business in this.

Much like Apple's News Plus product, which publishes news from media partners — at a cost to end users in premium cases — Facebook is looking to create partnerships with publishers whose content the social network will publish as a way to increase reach and, ultimately, advertising and even subscription revenue.

In fact, since December 2018, Facebook has been aggressively hiring a team of dealmakers who are reportedly offering deals "potentially worth millions" to publishers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Dow Jones. Some of those job listings are included below, along with when they were posted.

Title

Posted Date

Strategic Partner Manager, News Partnerships, Indonesia/Malaysia

20190809

Content Marketing Lead, News Partnerships

20190725

Strategic Partner Manager - Digital News Publishers, Facebook

20190720

Strategic Partner Manager, News

20190706

Strategic Partner Development - News Innovation, Media Partnerships

20190622

Strategic Partner Development - Messaging, Integrity Partnerships & News Policy

20190619

Strategic Partner Development - Integrity Partnerships and News Policies

20190618

Product Marketing Manager, News Publishing

20190616

News Program Lead, Media Partnerships

20190614

Deal Team - News, Media Partnerships

20190612

Partner Solutions Manager, News

20190612

Strategic Partner Manager, News, South

20190531

Product Design Manager - News Feed

20190503

Head of News Feed - Product Design (MPK)

20190318

Head of News Partnerships, India

20190318

Survey Research Scientist, News Feed

20190128

Partner Solutions Manager, News Partnerships – Southeast Asia

20190114

Partner Solutions Manager, News Partnerships – Southeast Asia

20181227

Software Engineer, News Feed

20181015

The new Facebook News Tab is expected to launch at the end of 2019. Given that timeline, the cadence of hiring for dealmakers and content curators found here dovetails nicely into that schedule.

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: