Facebook has introduced “Instant Articles”, a new product for publishers to create fast, interactive articles.
People share a lot of articles on Facebook, particularly on Facebook’s mobile app. To date, however, these stories take an average of eight seconds to load. Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as ten times faster than standard mobile web articles.
Along with a faster experience, Instant Articles introduces a suite of interactive features that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways. Zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting your phone. Watch auto-play videos come alive as you scroll through stories. Explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and even like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line.
Instant Articles are designed to give publishers control over their stories, brand experience and monetization opportunities. Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook’s Audience Network to monetize unsold inventory. Publishers will also have the ability to track data and traffic through comScore and other analytics tools.
The New York Times Company, President and CEO, Mark Thompson said, “The New York Times already has a significant and growing audience on Facebook. We’re participating in Instant Articles to explore ways of growing the number of Times users on Facebook, improving their experience of our journalism and deepening their engagement. We have a long tradition of meeting readers where they are and that means being available not just on our own sites, but on the social platforms frequented by many current and potential Times users.”
Tony Danker, International Director, Guardian News & Media said, “It is great to see Facebook trialing new ways for quality journalism to flourish on mobile. The Guardian is keen to test how the new platform can provide an even more engaging experience for our readers. It is then vital that, over time, Instant Articles delivers recurring benefit for publishers, whose continued investment in original content underpins its success.”
Techcrunch says,
BuzzFeed’s VP Of Product Chris Johanesen told the Instant Articles team “Great meeting, you but here are the seven things that we would need to be able to do this program”, a BuzzFeed spokesperson tells me. Those requests were:
- Compatibility with comScore traffic measurement
- Compatibility Google Analytics to understand the audience
- To make sure Google Analytics worked across all its content
- Compatibility with BuzzFeed’s internal analytics tools
- Control of design to make Instant Articles look and feel like BuzzFeed articles
- Ability to work with BuzzFeed on special formats like quizzes
- Monetization
Today, one Instant Article will be posted by each of the nine launch partners: The New York Times, The Atlantic, NBC, National Geographic, and BuzzFeed in the US; The Guardian and BBC News in the UK; and Spiegel and Bild in Germany. The posts will appear from their respective Facebook Pages in Instant Article format to iPhone users around the world, with Android version likely forthcoming. The post will also be collected on Facebook’s special Instant Articles Page. Those on the desktop or mobile web, Android, or other platforms will see the same links on the publishers’ websites formatted like normal.
“Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models,” said Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox.
Facebook is working with nine launch partners for Instant Articles: The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.
The publishers said they did not plan to put more than a few articles a week into the new format, at least at first. Facebook says it wants to be a good partner to news organizations. It began discussing its idea with around 20 publishers last August and tried to address the concerns they raised.
“We’re starting with something that we think is going to work for some publishers for some articles and for some business models,” Mr. Cox said. “We’re not trying to go, like, suck in and devour everything.”
