Facebook is announcing Instant Articles will be open to all publishers by Facebook’s F8 developer conference, which is taking place on April 12. At that time, any publisher — of any size, anywhere in the world — will be able to easily create fast, interactive articles and deliver a better mobile reading experience to people worldwide on Facebook.
Instant Articles leverages the same technology used to display photos and videos quickly in the Facebook app, articles load instantly, as much as 10 times faster than the standard mobile web.
At the moment, Instant Articles are available to big publishers such as The New York Times, The Guardian, MTV, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and BBC News on both iPhone and Android Facebook apps.
Facebook’s Product Manager Josh Roberts said in a press release: “We built Instant Articles to solve a specific problem—slow loading times on the mobile web created a problematic experience for people reading news on their phones. This is a problem that impacts publishers of all sizes, especially those with audiences where low connectivity is an issue.
“With that in mind, our goal from the beginning was to open up Instant Articles to all publishers and we’re excited to be able to do that in a way that makes it fast and easy for all publishers to reach their audiences on Facebook.”
Publishers have full control over the look of their stories, as well as data and ads. They have the ability to bring their own direct-sold ads and keep 100 per cent of the revenue, and track data on the ads served through their existing ad measurement systems, or they can monetize their content through the Facebook Audience Network.
