Following on from Twitter’s decision to feature sponsored Tweets in users’ timelines, Facebook has announced that it is readying a similar feature, according to an article published by New Media Age.

‘Sponsored Stories’ will feature in users’ News Feeds from January onwards.

The new initiative will provide brands with a greater reach for social media marketing campaigns – allowing them to reach users who have interacted with their page, as well as their friends.

Facebook spokesperson, Annie Ta, explained to ClickZ how Sponsored Stories would affect users of the social networking site.

She revealed: “You will only see Sponsored Stories in your News Feed about your friends or people you are connected to,” adding, “you will never see a post from a page you are not a fan of, or from people who are not your friends.

“We want to be really thoughtful about this, so we’ll have a lot of rate limits in place. We hope to show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their News Feeds per day and we’ll clearly label the story. They’ll also be of the same size and treatment as other stories in News Feed.”

Facebook has yet to announce a pricing plan for Sponsored Stories, or the brands that will be co-operating in the feature’s launch.

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Tags: Annie Ta, ClickZ, facebook, Sponsored Stories, Sponsored Tweets, twitter