Soon, ‘instantly’ read newspaper articles on Facebook

Facebook will soon make its Instant Articles programme live, with publishers like NBC News and the New York Times already in the fray.

Other early-stage partners include the Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel Online and Bild. Facebook would host the content on its servers so that it loads faster than regular article posts on mobile phones.

Publishers are ready to ramp up content distribution on Instant Articles, with some newsrooms preparing to post a few dozen stories a day, the Wall Street Journal reported.

By publishing articles directly to Facebook through Instant Articles instead of linking back to their own websites, publishers hope to increase the exposure of their content on the social networking service, especially on mobile devices, and improve load time.

Under the new programme, publishers will get to keep 100 percent of revenue brought in from ads that they sell and 70 percent if Facebook sells the ad. The WSJ quoted sources as saying that The New York Times was ready to publish some 30 articles per day directly to Facebook’s news feed and the Atlantic might make most of its content available through the programme.

Both outlets are already prepared to start publishing, and only waiting for Facebook’s nod. A Facebook spokesperson was reported as saying that the programme would begin soon.

“We’re excited for the next phase. At the outset we’ll be putting most of our content into the feed and will closely monitor the effect,” Atlantic chief operating officer Bob Cohn was quoted as saying. According to Chief Executive Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed intends to publish as much content as possible to the Facebook stream.

Initially, Facebook plans to make the articles visible to only select groups of users to see how they react, according to Peretti. Facebook created a stir last month when it announced it was partnering with nine major news organisations for Instant Articles.

On May 13, five companies — including BuzzFeed, the Times and National Geographic — each published one story directly on Facebook to much fanfare, but since then no other Instant Articles have appeared. Eventually, Facebook plans to give news organisations the ability to publish Instant Articles whenever they want.

Source | Free Press | 29 June 2015