In its never-ending quest to become the filter
through which we see all the wonders of the web, Facebook has unveiled a new
platform for news outlets. Instant Articles will offer tools for publishing
articles direct to the social network, delivering rich, fast-loading mobile
news content. As Facebook points out, lots of links to articles on external
websites are shared on the site every day. When clicked on a mobile device,
these are loaded using the browser function of Facebook's mobile app. These
links are by far its slowest loading single content type, taking an average of
eight seconds to be displayed.
By
employing the same technology used to display photos and videos in the Facebook
app, Instant Articles will reportedly load up to ten times faster than articles
hosted externally. A number of additional features are also being touted, such
as interactive maps, the ability to autoplay videos and pan around images by
tilting a device.
Of
course, Facebook benefits from all of this by having more content from which to
serve ads and by keeping more users on the site to view that content. Cynics
might argue that a faster means of loading external content might be more
beneficial to news publishers.
Facebook, however, says that the Instant Articles functionality
is designed "to give publishers control over their stories, brand
experience and monetization opportunities." Publishers will be able to
sell and manage their own ads in the articles, without having to use Facebook's
ad platform and will get to keep all the revenue generated. They will still be
able to use Facebook’s ad platform to sell ads into unsold spaces and will also
be able to use their existing analytics platforms.
It
has to be said too that, at first glance, the articles do have the potential to
look rather slick. Videos that play automatically and tilt-to-pan images help
to animate the articles, while interactive maps into which you can zoom to see
where photos were taken and audio captions to contextualize images help to add
additional layers of information.
Facebook says that Instant Articles will provide a fast,
interactive and engaging means for publishers to deliver content to their
audiences. The noises it is making about ensuring publishers have control over
their activity are encouraging, but many publishers will no doubt be wary of
sharing their business data with Facebook and having to operate within its
walled garden.
Instant
Articles will launch first on Facebook for iPhone with content fromThe
New York Times, BuzzFeed, National
Geographic, NBC and The
Atlantic.
What
do you think? Would you like to see all new blog trialing Instant Articles? Let
us know in the comments
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