Facebook starts news bid with Notify, goes against Apple News and more

Facebook's interest on news and content is no secret. The company now appears to be acting on that curiosity by releasing an iPhone app called Notify. The program collates news and entertainment stories into one constantly updated feed. It literally pushes notifications for notifications.

"Notifications are becoming one of the primary ways people first learn about things wherever they are. Today we are introducing Notify, a new app from Facebook that delivers timely notifications about the things that matter to you, from the sources you love, all in one place," Facebook said in a statement posted on its blog.

Depending on the person's interest, Notify will assist users on finding notifications from a selection of "stations." According to the site, the examples of stations are as follows:

· Final Scores station from FOX Sports provides end-of-game summaries based on the user's favourite teams
· Daily AM Forecast station from The Weather Channel sends a local weather forecast during the start of the user's day
· Hot New Trailers from Fandango
· CNN Breaking News
· Vogue 10 Best Dressed

These are just some of the ways users can customise their Notify app and feed. According to The Independent, Facebook veered away from producing hardware because Apple does it best already. However, Apple serves as a great barrier for Facebook to initiate greater user engagement. The Notify app can bypass all that and allow Facebook to interact with users.

Notify allows people to disable other notifications from other apps and rely solely on Facebook's version of it. Users can act on those notifications and watch videos, read full articles or open entire sites. The release of the program is only a testament of the increasing shift of the Internet and consumer behaviour.

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