Facebook Instant Articles as you may know right now is the proprietary platform by the social networking giant where they partner with publishers so that they can display their content like how it would look like on their individual sites. It has had a steady rollout this past year and now Facebook announced that it is now available across Asia.
For starters, Instant Articles was launched globally to all iPhone users on October. India was the first region on Asia to get Instant Articles but it was only for Android and in partnership with 5 local publications. Now for only iPhone users, Facebook users in Asia will be able to access content from over 50 publications across the region.
“Instant Articles has been designed with extensive feedback from publishers, and we’re excited to bring this collaboration to our publishing partners in Asia to help them distribute fas, interactive articles to their readers in the Facebook App” Andy Mitchell, Director of Global Media Partnerships on Facebook said in the post.
Facebook also says that on average, a typical news story on its platform takes 8 seconds to lead while Instant Articles loads upto 10 times faster. It is easy to identify an Instant Article thanks to the lightning bolt icon that appears on the right side.
Google has their own version of Instant Articles (Accelerated Mobile Pages) which they announced on October. They followed up recently by announcing when it will be formally launched and the number of publishers who have signed up to be a part of it. 2016 will definitely be the year where a scenario of visiting an actual website would be a thing of the past.
