The Guardian and Independent launch Facebook apps

journalism.co.uk reporting: The Guardian and Independent have become the first UK newspapers to launch a new style Facebook app, unveiled at the social media giant's annual F8 conference in London last night (22 September).

Both are a "new class of apps", according to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and "have the ability not only to change the way we think about news but have the ability to change the way the whole news industry works".

The Guardian and Independent are two of 33 European media brands to have partnered with Facebook to launch the apps. The European list also includes audio platform SoundCloud and international news outlets such as News Corp-owned iPad newspaper the Daily and the Washington Post.

Both the Guardian and the Independent apps are quite different, with the Guardian's, which can be viewed here, located as an app within Facebook and the Independent app sitting on the newspaper's site.

"As we worked with different news organisations there were two camps: people that wanted to bring the social experience onto their sites, like Yahoo [News] and the Independent; and those that wanted the social news experience on Facebook, like Guardian, the Washington Post and the Daily," director of Facebook's platform partnerships Christian Hernandez told Journalism.co.uk.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/the-guardian-and-independent-launch-facebook-apps/s2/a546112/