Starting today, a few hundred thousand Facebook Inc. users in the U.S. will see a new tab at the bottom of the social network’s mobile app that features articles curated from major media outlets.

Facebook News, as the feature is aptly called, is the company’s latest foray into news aggregation. It follows past attempts such as the 2015 introduction of Instant Articles that failed to achieve the desired traction.

This time, Facebook hopes to kill two birds with one stone and create a trusted hub where users can consume stories from credible publications, while providing a new revenue stream for those outlets.

The 200,000-odd consumers who can access Facebook News today are taking part in what is essentially a test run. The social network is reportedly aiming to make the feature more broadly available early next year and plans to use that time to expand the available content selection. 

About 200 publications have come aboard so far, including national outlets such as The New York Times as well as local newspapers in major U.S. cities. According to Bloomberg, Facebook is paying some of the publishers $1 million to $3 million a year for permission to share their content. “I just think every internet platform has a responsibility to fund and form partnerships for news,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said today at a New York event dedicated to Facebook News.

The feature shares some similarities with Apple’s News app. There’s a section called Today’s Stories with articles curated by human editors followed by the main feed, which consists of algorithmically aggregated content selected based on the user’s interests. Consumers can manually customize the news tab by removing articles, subjects and publishers that don’t capture their attention. 

Facebook executives addressed the decision to combine human and algorithmic curation in the blog post announcing the feature. “Regarding personalization, publishers worry that machine learning has limits and they’re right,” wrote Campbell Brown, vice president of news partnerships, and Facebook News product manager Mona Sarantakos. “We have progress to make before we can rely on technology alone to provide a quality news destination.”

The Facebook News tab currently has six sections: business, entertainment, science and technology, health and sports. In the settings menu where users can customize which of these topics show up in their feed, there’s also an option to link paid news subscriptions to the app.  

Image: Facebook