TORONTO – Facebook has partnered with nine media outlets, including The New York Times and Buzzfeed, to create fast-loading articles published directly to the social network’s mobile news feed.
The feature, “Instant Articles,” allows users of Facebook’s mobile app to load news stories more than 10 times faster than standard web articles.
How it works
Currently, links to articles outside of Facebook have the slowest loading time of any other content on Facebook. The average wait time for one of these links is about eight seconds, according to the social network.
Instant Articles will be hosted directly on Facebook’s servers, significantly cutting down on loading times.
Think of the articles more like a status update than a link. When you click on the Instant Article it will open within Facebook, instead of taking you to an outside website (which causes those loading times).
How it will change your Facebook experience
Publishers will have the ability to create more interactive articles through the feature. For example, you will be able to see high-resolution photos, watch auto-play videos, play around with interactive maps, or listen to audio captions.
“Fundamentally, this is a tool that enables publishers to provide a better experience for their readers on Facebook,” said Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox in a blog post.
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“Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models.”
However, as Quartz points out, none of the content will be exclusive to Facebook. Any article feature in Instant Articles will still appear on the publisher’s website.
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Who’s on board
Facebook has launched the tool with nine media partners including The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.
At launch, Instant Articles will only be available on the Facebook for iPhone app. You can view examples of Instant Articles at Facebook.com/instantArticles.
What it means for publishers
The feature is changing how media outlets can make money with online content.
Publishers can either sell or embed advertising in their articles and keep all of the revenue, or allow Facebook to sell ads.
Media outlets will also be able to track data and traffic on the article through comScore and other analytic tools.
Are there any concerns?
Some media commentators have argued that publishing news directly to Facebook is handing over too much control to a social media site. Some have even argued that this could result in censorship by Facebook.
However, others argue that this is simply a new area to explore for media outlets. For example, many outlets – Global News included – have experimented with using non-traditional social media platforms like Snapchat to share news.
Quartz reporter Leo Mirani points out that the idea isn’t that far off from publishing videos to YouTube.
“It’s cheaper and easier than signing expensive contracts with content hosts and distributors to do essentially the same thing. But it also means ceding some control to Google, which owns YouTube,” Mirani wrote.
There is also some concern that users will only be exposed to certain stories.
However, it doesn’t appear that the aim of Instant Stories is to replace the publisher’s Facebook page, where they can share a variety of different stories.
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