Facebook Instant Articles Aim to Make the Web Obsolete

Facebook has unveiled its content publishing solution inside Facebook.

Facebook has launched Facebook Instant Articles. Facebook is giving publishers tools to publish content inside Facebook, which allows Facebook to keep its users inside Facebook, making the web unnecessary. Facebook is working with nine launch partners for Instant Articles including The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.

Instant Articles is optimized for mobile consumption of content. Facebook says that people share a lot of articles on Facebook, particularly on our mobile app. To date, however, these stories take an average of eight seconds to load, by far the slowest single content type on Facebook. Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as ten times faster than standard mobile web articles.

Besides load speed, Instant Articles offer a selection of interactive features. Readers can zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting the phone. Auto-play videos come alive as users scroll through stories. Readers can explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line.

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.

“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. “Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models.”

Currently Facebook Instant Articles is only available in the Facebook iPhone app.