Bulletin is an online newsletter platform launched by

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

on July 6, 2021, that allows notable writers to make announcements directly to their subscribers. Its competitors include

Substack Substack is an American Online platforms for collaborative consumption, online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters dir ...

, of which Bulletin was called a "near-clone." Writers participating in the platform's launch included

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is an English-born Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published seven books: '' The Tipping Point: How Little ...

Mitch Albom Mitchell David Albom (born May 23, 1958) is an American author, journalist, and musician. His books have sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Having achieved national recognition for sports writing in his early career, he turned to writing the ...

Tan France Tanveer Wasim "Tan" France ( Safdar; born 20 April 1983) is a British-American fashion designer and television personality. Of Pakistani descent, he is one of the first openly gay South Asian men on a major show and one of the first out Muslim ...

Jessica Yellin Jessica Sage Yellin (born February 25, 1971) is an American journalist. Focused primarily on politics, she was the Chief White House Correspondent for CNN in Washington, D.C. from 2011 to 2013. Described as "one of the most powerful women in W ...

, Jane Wells,

Erin Andrews Erin Jill Andrews (born May 4, 1978) is an American sportscaster, television personality, and actress. She rose to prominence as a correspondent on the American cable sports channel ESPN after joining the network in 2004. She later joined Fox Sp ...

and

Dorie Greenspan Dorie Greenspan (born October 24, 1947) is an American author of cookbooks. ''The New York Times'' called her a "culinary guru" in 2004. Culinary career Greenspan has won the James Beard Foundation Award five times, as well as the Internatio ...

. Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...

stated that Bulletin represented the first time that the company had "built a project that is directly for journalists and individual writers." In October 2022

Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...

announced the shut down of Bulletin. The platform went into read only mode in January 2023 and will be unavailable starting April 2023.

History

Bulletin is an online newsletter platform announced by Facebook on June 29, 2021. and launched by the company on July 6, 2021. Facebook CEO

touted the service by saying that Bulletin represented the first time that the company had "built a project that is directly for journalists and individual writers." Writers participating in the platform's launch included

, Jane Wells,

and

Criticism

Unlike competitor such as

, Facebook indicated upon service's launch that it would not take a cut of subscription fees of writers using that platform. According to ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...

'' technology writer Will Oremus, the move was criticized by those who viewed it as a form of

predatory pricing Predatory pricing is a pricing strategy, using the method of undercutting on a larger scale, where a dominant firm in an industry will deliberately reduce the prices of a product or service to loss-making levels in the short-term. The aim is tha ...

intended by Facebook to force those competitors out of business. Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director of the

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental ...

Open Markets, called for the government to reexamine predatory pricing as a violation of

antitrust law Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrus ...

, saying, "We want companies to compete by making better products, investing in new equipment and tech — not purely relying on their financial advantages to capture market share."

References

External links

{{Authority control Facebook 2021 establishments in California Internet properties established in 2021 2021 establishments in the United States Products introduced in 2021 Proprietary cross-platform software Social media Online companies of the United States Blog hosting services