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People are silhouetted as they pose with mobile devices in front of a screen projected with a Facebook logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014. Facebook Inc warned on Tuesday of a dramatic increase in spending in 2015 and projected a slowdown in revenue growth this quarter, slicing a tenth off its market value. Facebook shares fell 7.7 percent in premarket trading the day after the social network announced an increase in spending in 2015 and projected a slowdown in revenue growth this quarter. Reuters/Dado Ruvic

Twitter is way ahead of Facebook when it comes to notifications and aggregating news stories. But Facebook is reportedly gearing-up to take on Twitter, and is likely to launch a real-time news app named “Notify” that does just that.

Facebook is said to be testing Notify, an app that will allow people to aggregate notifications, according to a report in The Awl. In August, Business Insider UK reported the social media giant is working on a stand-alone mobile app that will let users select the publications that will post news alerts on their wall.

Notify will allow users to subscribe to news organizations in their preferred language. The notifications are sent in real time from “providers” consisting of publishers and content creators that can be grouped together in sections or “stations” and “substations” or people.

A number of publications are in the process of testing the app and Facebook will launch Notify by the end of this month. Notify lets users follow publishers and content creators and receive notifications as soon as they’re published on the Web.

For the past few months, Facebook has been trying include different aspects of online news into its platform. With Instant Articles, the tech giant enabled publishers to post articles directly from CMS onto Facebook. This helps in quickly downloading photos, videos and articles in the Facebook mobile app, which is said to be 10 times faster than the standard mobile web.

Facebook’s huge user base prompted popular publications such as The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, The New York Times, The Guardian and the BBC to take the plunge. In July 2015, the Huffington Post had nearly eight million shared articles on Facebook, reports News Whip.

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