Facebook Instant Articles Service Could Disrupt Google News

 

Facebook has announced the creation of a new service created for publishers to “create fast, interactive articles on Facebook.” According to the company, their new Instant Articles service is designed so “Publishers of any type, anywhere in the world can deliver an incredibly fast and immersive reading experience for people on Facebook.”

The new program includes features that include new data illustrating how Instant Articles is better for people and publishers. Also it introduces a number of partnerships with publishing tools and analytics providers to support the publishing process, and sharing more detail on how branded content is supported in Instant Articles.

According to the company’s announcement, the response to Instant Articles has been tremendous. “More than one thousand publishers worldwide are officially part of the program, and at every step of the way, we see clear evidence that Instant Articles provides a better reading experience for people and a significant boost for publishers looking to reach their audiences on Facebook”

The announcement continues, “Additionally for many people around the world, it’s challenging to get news on mobile simply because it takes too long to load. We’ve invested heavily in optimizing performance on Android, with the goal of providing the best mobile reading experience for people everywhere, no matter where they are in the world or what connection or device they’re on. In countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines and others, we’ve found that people on slower connections read 20-40% more Instant Articles than mobile web articles on average as a result.

“As more publishers join the program, we want to make sure the process of creating and managing Instant Articles is seamless. We’ve partnered with a group of open source platforms, analytics providers, and third-party developers to build tools that help publishers create, manage, and monitor performance of their Instant Articles.”

Facebook notes that the program is supported by publishing tools such as WordPress, Drupal, Atavist, Medium, Perk Distributed, RebelMouse, ShareThis, Sovrn, Steller, Tempest.

Analytics Tools are also supported, including Adobe Analytics, Chartbeat, comScore, Nielsen, Parsely, SimpleReach.

According to the company, Facebook’s Instant Articles has been designed to work collaboratively “with our publishing partners to understand their needs and shape the product and we want to thank them for their continued feedback. We look forward to continuing this journey of informing people and connecting them to the news that matters to them, together.”

The implications of this service are tremendous. If it gains sufficient traction, it could take a huge chunk out of global page views for Google News. As data consumption shifts towards mobile views over desktop, reading the news while logged in to your favorite social network could well become the flavor of the day.

Publishers are already supporting this initiative of Facebook’s, so keep your eyes open for an update from us as things progress on the Instant Articles phenomenon.