Facebook to open Instant articles to all publishers at April conference

123RF

To date, it has been working with a few hundred publishers around the world to build an incredibly fast and immersive reading experience for people on Facebook. While it was getting feedback and making improvements to Instant Articles, in parallel it has been building the tools to open up Instant Articles more broadly.

Facebook built Instant Articles to solve a specific problem—slow loading times on the mobile web created difficulties for people reading news on their phones. This affects publishers of all sizes, especially those with audiences where low connectivity is an issue. With that in mind, the goal was to open up Instant Articles to all publishers in a way that makes it fast and easy for all publishers to reach their audiences on Facebook.

Media organisations and journalists are an integral part of Facebook and it is committed to delivering products that will create the best experience for publishers and their readers. With Instant Articles, 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% 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. Additionally, publishers can use their existing web-based analytics systems to track article traffic or use third-party providers. They can do all this, while accessing a rich suite of multimedia tools, to create dynamic, interactive stories, that will load quickly everywhere on Facebook, regardless of where in the world their readers are.

The platform has made it easy for publishers to join, by building a system based on the tools they already use. Instant Articles uses the languages of the web and works with publishers’ content management systems and Facebook has documented an open standard that is easy for publishers to adopt. It encourages all interested publishers to review the documentation and prepare for open availability in April, at which point they will be able to share this fast, interactive experience with their readers.

For more information, go here.