Facebook’s breaking news app sounds a lot like Twitter

So far not all publications will be part of this initiative as Facebook has only chosen a few to work with at the start.

A new report claims that Facebook is prepping a “breaking news” app that’s meant to push alerts to users when important news happens. Since it’s a separate download from the Facebook app, the breaking news feature shouldn’t be forced upon any current users.

Users will be able to choose which “stations” and “substations” they wish to receive alerts from. Each notification allows for 100 characters to be disseminated, along with a URL to the story published on the partnering publication’s website.

Still in early development stages, the app is said to work by asking which publications you’d like to receive notifications from and what your topics of interest are.

Facebook’s got all kinds of applications outside of its core social networking app. For example, there’s Messenger, Rooms, Stickered, Riff, and more.

The social network is apparently looking to expand upon the news it already displays in the News Feed and in trends on Facebook.

“Facebook keeps growing as a news source, so it makes sense it would somehow try to capitalize on that, even if this app sounds like it’s not much more than a medium for publications to funnel their content through”, writes TheVerge.